


Mama's Boy

by withswords



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (but he's still like. a racist for now), (he gets better.), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Best Friends, Body Shaming, Bullying, Crushes, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Friends to Lovers, Gay Awakening, Good Draco Malfoy, Jealousy, Lucius is dead, M/M, Original Character(s), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Self-Esteem Issues, Slow Burn, Slytherin Harry Potter, Worldbuilding, original lore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 16:06:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18594715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withswords/pseuds/withswords
Summary: In the summer of 1981, Lucius Malfoy died under mysterious circumstances. Months later, Voldemort disappeared.In the summer of 1991, Draco Malfoy made his first friend. Months later, Voldemort reappeared. And the rest is history.





	1. Draco Malfoy and the Little Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome y'all! I'm gay and stupid and I like Draco/ Harry! Have some fun with me!
> 
> The fic is going to start with a lot of similarities to the first book in plot points, but after the end of first year we're going to move into totally brand new territory, and I'm super excited to build out my own vision of the HP world with y'all!

Robe fitting was an absolute misery, and one Draco was subjected to more often than most children his age. Wearing robes daily was common practice among the old blood, even if some lesser families had taken to Muggle fashions. His mum, for her part, wouldn’t see him caught dead in something so uncouth as trousers, or Merlin forbid, a _jumper_ . Draco was a good boy. He could stand still for any number of minutes while charmed needles prodded a hair’s breadth away from his skin, and tape measures wrapped and unwrapped around various parts of his body. But he still _hated_ it.

The only way he’d managed to not lose his mind between shopping, society dinners, and all the other frequent occasions that required him to stand still and try not to be so precocious, was becoming a people-watcher. It was a trick he’d learned from Narcissa herself. Few people could immediately read a room the way she could. She was tuned into everything. She was impossible to lie to- for him to lie to, at least.

Draco had been watching the street in the reflection of the mirror for the past few minutes, as Malkin bustled around him doing whatever dull things she did, and then bustled away into the back. Her instruments continued to hover around him, going about their work. It would have been much faster if she was only preparing his school robes, but of course his mum had to be excessive and have his dress robes let out to match his growth spurt. They’d probably be ill-fitting by Christmas when he’d have a chance to wear them again. She had brought a book, and was posted up at the side of the room reading it, because even she knew this was unbearable. There hadn’t been anyone particularly interesting out today.

Then the wildman lumbered into view. Draco only just kept his jaw from dropping. He might have thought that the man was a sentient tangle of hair, if he didn’t see one great arm draped in rough leathers reach out and open the door. He didn’t expect to get _into_ the place, did he? Even if he could fit inside the building, there was no way even an ‘all occasions’ robe shop would tailor for a giant. Right?

A skinny little thing with absolute mounds of wild hair shuffled into the shop. The giant behind him gave him a quick pat to encourage him in, and then pulled his massive arm back out of the doorway and lumbered back off. Draco could have sighed in relief.

The little thing hung back towards the entrance of the shop, waiting for Draco’s fitting to be finished. He was dressed in shabby Muggle clothes, draping off him so severely he could have practically passed them off for robes. He looked all around the store, glancing at the cheap, off-the-rack robes and fiddling with what Draco had to guess was the money in his pockets. Draco couldn’t help but be curious.

“Did you come with that giant fellow?” he asked in what he hoped was a light and pleasant tone.

It seemed to take the boy a few moments to realize he was being spoken to. “Er,” he said a bit stupidly, “yeah.”

Draco waited for a few moments for some kind of elaboration, and received none. He was back to looking around the shop. “Well…” He scrambled briefly for words. “I mean, surely he’s not your father?”

Based on the bushiness of their hair alone, he wouldn’t have ruled out the possibility entirely, but the wildman had to be some sort of giant half-breed, and not even with a mother of the most excellent breeding could they produce such a reedy runt of a child. The boy looked back at him and then down at the floor, then back up. On his other side, Draco could feel his mum look up at him over the top of her book. And sure, he might have been a touch rude, but as though she could have phrased it any more nicely!

“No. Hagrid’s just looking after me. I don’t, um...”

Something had distracted him. The little thing’s eyes, wide as galleons, were following the path of the enchanted robemaker’s tools as though he’d never seen a simple charm like that before. Draco couldn’t help but smirk a little and raise his brows. “Muggleborn?”

His eyes snapped to Draco’s in the reflection. Grindelwald’s balls, but they were green. The contrast was quite striking against his dark skin. He opened and shut his mouth a few times, and Draco was prepared to take it as a ‘yes,’ because the kid probably didn’t know what a Muggle was, until he shut it firmly and shook his head.

“My parents are dead.”

He said it so. Not casually, but. His voice was as heavy and deadpan as a dropped brick, and it knocked the smile off Draco’s face.

“Oh,” he said, and now he sounded like the stupid one. Swallowing, he attempted to recover by blurting out, “My father is dead as well, so I completely understand.”

Ugh ugh ugh! He really _was_ the stupid one! He could hear the sharp breath his mum took in through her nose, and tried not to wince visibly.

The-- orphan got a weird smile on his face, brows furrowed and squinting just a bit at him. Like he was torn between laughing at him and being concerned. A light flush rose to his cheeks and was oh so visible on his pasty skin. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he replied charitably.

Things got very quiet for about 10 seconds, with the boy still staring at him, before Draco couldn’t stand it anymore. “I’m Draco Malfoy.”

He nodded carefully and said, “I’m Harry Potter.”

Draco had whipped around almost before he knew what he was doing. “No!” he burst out incredulously. “Really?”

“Draco.” His mum hardly had to raise her voice above a whisper before he turned around and put his arms out to the sides again.

“Mum,” he whined. He couldn’t disrupt the fitting just a bit for _Harry Potter_? She wouldn’t gratify him with a response, just going back to her novel, and he clicked his tongue in annoyance.

Looking back to him- to _Harry Potter!_ \- Draco found him scuffing his dirty shoe on the floor and looking deeply out of place. Wasn’t that a strange look for one of the great heroes of the wizarding world? Everything about him was strange, when he thought about it. The glasses bent out of shape, the too-worn baggy clothes, his twig of a body.

“You don’t look at all like I thought you would,” Draco said because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut today.

Harry Potter frowned up at him at that. “Well I can’t very well help that, can I?”

Draco suppressed the full-on grin that threatened to take over his whole face, and smushed it down into just a smirk. “I suppose not.”

He’d met Harry Potter _first_! Before Parkinson or Zabini or Greengrass or Bones, who none of them could have resisted blabbing about it. But Draco had restraint. More than that, he had strategy. A sense of style. He could picture it now: walking into the Great Hall with Harry Potter next to him, giving nods of barest acknowledgement to everybody’s stupid fat faces as they watched him and rioted with jealousy.

“So why did you come here with him? The giant? He your bodyguard?” Draco teased. As though the boy who defeated the Dark Lord as a baby would need some overgrown half-breed to protect him!

Harry Potter scrubbed the back of his neck. He was probably sick of everyone asking him questions all the time- Draco would be, in his position. The price of celebrity. “Something like that. It’s all been sort of complicated, honestly.”

Draco nodded sagely. “I expect your whole life is complicated.”

Harry Potter laughed. It was just a little laugh, and Draco hadn’t meant to be funny, but he’d laughed at _his_ comment. Not in a derisive way, not like he was making fun of Draco for saying something too wordy or too snarky for his own good. Just like if Draco had made a joke, like friends do. He couldn’t help but puff himself up a bit.

Of course, at that moment Madam Malkin stepped back out and with a wave of her wand dismissed the needles and tapes and clippers. The seams tightened and laid flat, leaving him in a fitted black robe.

“I’m very sorry to keep you waiting, young man,” Malkin said in her sweet, brittle old voice, and Draco gave her a gracious nod before realizing she was talking to Harry Potter, and flushing all over again. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Harry Potter crack a smile, like they were in on a joke together. He could just about faint. “I’ll be another 10 minutes or so with your new friend, for his dress robes.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

Everyone turned to watch his mum rise to her feet. Her robes were almost as plain as his school ones, but the subtle touches of silver trim shone against the black fabric like streaks of ice. She transfigured the book in her hand into a slim black pocketbook, and gestured for him.

Draco furrowed his brows, glancing between her and Harry Potter. “But mum, I thought--”

“You were right, Draco,” she interrupted smoothly. She reached up and unpinned the black lace of her veil, tucked up around her complicated updo, so that it fell around her face. “We ought to wait until the holidays to see to those.”

He scrunched up his nose, but didn’t argue. Hopping down from the perch, he followed behind his mum as she brushed out of the shop. Draco turned, with one foot out the door, and smiled at Harry Potter. He resisted the urge to glance into the mirror, because he could feel how stupid he looked. And he almost didn’t care, because Harry Potter smiled back.

“I’ll see you at school.”

 

\-----

 

His mum saw him onto the platform, cool as night in her black fur cloak. He was already in school robes; he’d been too excited to wear anything else. He’d practiced his spellcasting at home for years and years of course, and had a go at half the books in the extensive library even if they were a bit beyond him. But there was nothing like properly _learning_. In the days between shopping and now, he’d given her quite the justification if she went insane. He snuck off to practice in his father’s disused office and kept dropping the old oak desk from an inch off the ground trying to levitate it until she confiscated the new wand he’d been trying to break in. 

They’d hugged and said their goodbyes at home, so they wouldn’t be unsightly on the platform. Draco nodded to her, they exchanged a few words, and she gave him a pat on the shoulder before letting him board the train. They were early enough that he managed to find a compartment all to himself. He posted himself by the window, and watched the throng of parents and students making a mess of themselves in public.

“Pansy, come look!” A slick, smiling voice lanced out from behind Draco and stabbed him in the gut. “Malfoy’s found us a compartment all to ourselves.”

He didn’t gratify Zabini by turning around to face their clique as they piled in. Him, Parkinson, Bulstrode, and Nott arranged themselves in the seats, with Draco pressing up close to the window and trying to focus on the crowd instead of their voices. They didn’t make it easy for him. They never did.

He sat up a little straighter as a familiar shag of dark hair bobbed onto the platform. There he was. He was so small, he disappeared among the other families right away, but Draco knew he’d seen him. He could just scream- if he’d been a few minutes faster or the clique had been a few minutes slower, Draco could have invited him in as he passed by, and maybe never have to speak to the rest of them.

“Malfoy!” He jumped as someone pegged him in the back of the neck with a bit of hard gum. “I asked a question.”

Draco turned and glared at Parkinson. She was a truly vulgar girl despite all her pretentions at class. Bulstrode might have been a great fat oaf, but at least she was quiet and didn’t pretend to be anything else. The others could stand to learn something from her.

Parkinson gave her head a subtle shake so that her silver earrings caught the light. She’d pushed her hair back behind her ears, so she must have been trying to show them off. “I said, won’t it be a delight to have us all together in Slytherin? My parents have said, there’s nothing quite like the view from under the lake.”

She was speaking to all of them but looking at him in such a pointed way that he knew what was coming next. It was like they coordinated themselves against him by Legilimency.

Before he could give any kind of simple, noncommittal answer, Nott piped up. His voice wasn’t as placid as Parkinson’s and Zabini’s always were, and as usual he wasn’t clever enough not to give the game away. “You sure Malfoy can make Slytherin?”

Pansy put a hand to her chest and scoffed, unable to keep the smile down as she said, “Theo, how could you say something so awful? He’s legacy as much as any of us. That’s reason alone, isn’t it?”

“Of course I’ll make Slytherin.” Draco kept his voice as bland as possible.

“Might depend on what the Hat knows. You could argue that a sour legacy might lose you favor.”

“There is some truth in that.” Zabini nodded slowly. He had a way of getting everyone to stop and pay attention to him any time he spoke. His was the easy composure of royalty, despite his mother’s fairly common background. As much as Draco hated to admit it, Zabini was, in short, perfect. “You know, Salazar himself was known for his intolerance of failure. It was the subject of several of his tracts, actually. It’s quite fascinating. He argues in one, that in dire circumstances, failing one’s lord can be tantamount to blood treachery. That… ‘a true wish to succeed is met with an effort which creates success.’”

Draco felt his face grow hot and he wished, wished, _wished_ he was strong enough to cast without speaking, and glamour his skin not to give away his shame.

They’d gotten less effective over time, but somehow they always knew how to get a rise out of him. A few years ago, he'd flung into his mum’s arms crying when they’d gotten home from one of Zabini’s mother’s ridiculous dinner parties, and she had told him, in no uncertain terms, that he was to be civil anyway. Beyond civil. Unfailingly polite. Nothing more, nothing less. He was better off not trying to like them or to please them, but it was good politics to tolerate them at least.

“Don’t worry, Draco,” Zabini continued. “We’ll put in a good word for you with the Sorting Hat.”

Parkinson laughed politely behind her hand. “Blaise, don’t be silly. We’ll all be sorted after Malfoy, after all!”

Zabini snapped. “Merlin, you’re right! I must have forgotten entirely.”

“I suppose that means,” Pansy sighed, “if you’re counting on us… It’s all up to Millicent, isn’t it?”

Bulstrode just snorted.

Draco clenched his hands tight into fists, as the train whistle began to blow.

Nott threw his feet up into Draco's lap and gave him a sneering smile when Draco pushed them off. Draco got to his feet. “Don't dirty my robes unless you're prepared to _scourgify_ them yourself.”

He always took his mum's advice, but he had to draw the line somewhere.

“Don't be such a priss, Malfoy,” Parkinson sighed, at the same time that Nott barked back, “I damn well won't, I'm not an elf.”

“And I'm not a footstool.” Draco reached up and flicked his bangs to the side in a way that was most certainly not prissy. “If you have to make excuses for not being able to cast the simplest charms, I don't have to wonder what house _you'll_ end up in.”

Someone kicked him in the back of the leg and made him stumble with the lurch of the train as it pulled away- Zabini. He caught himself squarely on top of Parkinson, who made a mocking kissing noise and shoved him back, to a chorus of laughter from the rest of them.

“Go get us something from the trolley if you're up, won't you? _Darling_ Draco?” Zabini drawled, clearly doing a poor impression of Draco's own mother.

Drawing himself up, Draco gave the rest of the compartment his coldest glare and pulled out his wand. It was worth it to see them all flinch towards their own for a moment. With a whisper of “ _Aberto_ ,” he flicked his wand and let the compartment door slam open. He tried not to flinch himself at the sound of it; this new hawthorn wand his mum had insisted on wasn’t nearly as delicate as his father’s.

He tucked it away and marched himself out with his head high. He was absolutely not going to fetch them any snacks. If he had to, he would just take shelter with some older students, or… well. He’d seen Harry Potter come to the platform with that gaggle of Weasleys, so more than likely he’d be swept away into the lion’s den. But maybe, if luck was on his side, Draco could catch him alone.

He peeked into every compartment as he passed. At a glance, he could pretty well tell the wheat from the chaff; he recognized some of the purebloods, and even if he didn’t, many of them had arrived on the platform in robes. And there was a certain carriage and manner of speaking that set real wizards apart. He glanced in on a pair of noisy redheads in lumpy clothes, playing exploding snap with a dreadlocked boy across from them. _Usually_ they could be set apart, at least.

Draco almost despaired that he must have missed him, when he saw him. He was still in those shabby Muggle clothes, still looking a wreck. Draco’s palms started to sweat as he opened the door. He even forgot to use his wand.

“Harry?” he piped up, and one of the greatest natural talents of all time looked over at him, startled, looking about how Draco felt.

“Oh, um,” Harry Potter scrunched up his face for a second, and then smoothed out as he asked, “Draco, right?”

He rocked up onto his toes and nodded. “Do you mind if I sit down?

“No, go ahead.”

Draco shut the door behind himself and took a seat at the window again. His face looked brighter than when they’d first met, more lively. He was probably just as excited to be going as Draco. He’d had time to do his research between their first meeting and now- it’d seemed strange that _Harry Potter_ had been so entranced with a boring enchantment like Malkin’s. As dreadful as the prospect sounded, being hidden away in the Muggle world explained it all. Naturally the Boy Who Lived was a font of raw magic, and without a wizarding upbringing, he never could have known the kind of finesse one was capable of wielding.

Draco’s palms hadn’t gotten less clammy, he realized. Here was a chance to do something dazzling. A good second impression was even more important than a good first.

“Your glasses are still broken.” Harry Potter blinked fast as Draco pulled out his wand and aimed it between his eyes. “ _Reparo_!”

Nothing happened. Flustered, he shook out his wand hand a couple of times, like he could knock the spell loose. It was the nerves, it had to be. He didn’t cast well under pressure.

“Hang on, just a minute. I’m-- still getting used to this wand. I’ve cast this loads of times before.”

“It’s alright, I’m used to it. The glasses, I mean.”

Harry was smiling at him. His glasses had slipped a bit down his nose, and when he pushed them up, Draco could almost see the pink-white dagger of scar on his forehead.

“I promise you, I’ll fix them,” Draco said with utmost seriousness.

“Well… alright, if you like.”

Appeased for the moment, he sat back, and the two of them looked out the window at the passing countryside. It was hard to imagine being cut off from his own kind.

“What’s it like to live with them? With Muggles?”

Harry opened his mouth, closed it, and got a hint of a cross look on his face. “I suppose that’s public knowledge, is it? That I live with my aunt and uncle?”

“Well, you’re famous, they do a column about you in the Prophet practically every year.”

Hearing this didn’t seem to soothe Harry any. Biting his lip, he muttered, “I’m not used to being famous. I only just found out there is a... ‘wizarding world’ at all.”

“You what?”

Draco almost slapped his hand over his mouth, as though that would take back that little outburst. The aborted action came out like a full-body flinch. Like he was startled by his own voice. He shut his mouth with a click. Stupid! Big _stupid_ mouth!

Harry just nodded. “I mean, I always knew I was strange, but, I dunno, it didn’t seem possible… I mean, strange things happen to everyone sometimes, but it doesn’t mean it’s magic.”

“So no one’s told you anything.”

For some reason that he felt without understanding, his heart sank. Harry ruffled his hair and showed a flash of his scar. It was long and jagged from his hairline, standing out starkly between his skin and hair. It wasn’t fair.

“Hagrid’s told me about Voldemort--” Draco flinched for real this time-- “and about Hogwarts and some of what I think must be the basics.”

“You’re starting out from the same place as the Muggleborns,” he mourned. “You, of all people.”

Since Harry was looking increasingly uncomfortable, Draco sat forward in his seat and reached out a hand. “We don’t have long, but I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

Harry looked down at his hand, then up at him. Draco mimicked the action and asked, “What?”

“No, just. Just a handshake? Not like, touching your wands together and saying some magic words or something?” Draco squinted at him for a few moments. He caught the smile in Harry’s eyes, then, and realized that he was taking the piss. It was strangely exciting when Harry did it.

“Come on, do you want to learn something or not?”

He laughed through his nose and took Draco’s hand.

A shiver passed through him from head to toe.

Draco decided that a good place to start would be Hogwarts. He rattled off what he knew about it- the houses, the founding, the classes, the professors. A few points, Harry would nod like he’d heard this before, and Draco would start to skim. No need to be tedious. The trolley passed them, and they both sprang for a handful of sweets; in between chatter about school, Draco would point out all the different kinds and what made them special. Even if it wasn’t the most perfectly educational, he preened to see Harry’s eyes grow wide in eagerness when he talked about the giant squid and the forbidden forest and the moving staircases.

“The whole castle is completely massive. There’s things hidden in there that people probably haven’t laid eyes on in generations.”

Harry nodded then. “Hagrid told me that Hogwarts was one of the safest places in the world when we were at Gringotts.”

“Oh, did you go to your vault?” Draco practically bounced in his seat. “Mum’s never let me been, not since I was little. She says she doesn’t want me concerning myself with the family’s finances, but...”

“But what?”

His expression darkened somewhat. “Apparently when I was three or four she took me with her to the bank, and I was so afraid of the goblins that I screamed and cried the entire time. I think sometimes she still worries I will.”

That got a laugh from Harry, but he softened it by saying, “I practically did that myself. They’re terrifying.”

“It’s the fingers! They’re like spider legs!”

“The teeth did it for me. But yeah, I went to the vault. I can’t imagine you’re missing much by not going. But after… and this was a little strange. He got this sort of package on urgent business from the headmaster.”

He rolled his eyes at the mention of the headmaster. “I suppose they needed to hide something at the school. It wouldn’t be the first time. There’s loads of old stories that Salazar Slytherin hid a monster in the school, you know, but nobody’s ever found it, so who knows. Only his heir is supposed to be able to get into it. But they’ve all died out, of course. Merlin, I half wish sometimes that I _was_ the heir.”

He caught himself rambling, and took a vehement bite out of a licorice wand to keep his mouth busy with anything else but talking. Harry’s expression was too much like a cringe for his liking.

“What are you making that face for?”

“Nothing. I’ve just heard that Slytherin house… aren’t very good people.”

Draco waved a hand dismissively. “That’s just prejudice. Everybody does what they please to get their way. Slytherins are at least honest about it. But mum says, a Gryffindor is a person who’ll lie and cheat the broom out from under you, and tell you it’s for your own good.”

Harry got a sour twist to his mouth. “You know what house my parents were in?”

He’d started pouting before he could stop himself. “Well obviously not _all_ Gryffindors, I’m sure your parents were very decent. But some of You-Know-Who’s worst followers were Gryffindors. Like-- like Sirius Black.”

Harry was about to ask who that even was, when a timid knock rattled on the glass of the compartment door. They both glanced over to see a doughy boy with wet eyes and his hair in a plastered-down bowl cut, sliding the compartment door open.

“What d’you want Longbottom?” Draco’s tone wasn’t quite mean- he didn’t pick on Longbottom like some of the others, it didn’t seem sporting- but it was enough to make him shrink down into his puffy sweatshirt.

“I was just, er.” Longbottom shuffled in place. “My toad’s gone missing.”

Draco forced himself not to make a distasteful expression. He’d never been one for toads. He didn’t care for the way they moved, all sticky bodies and lopsided little heads. They were hardly even useful as familiars compared to cats and owls. He shrugged and looked over at Harry, who shook his head.

“Sorry,” Harry said, and sounded legitimately apologetic about it. “I’ll keep an eye out.”

“Thanks.” He made to leave, and then looked back into the compartment awkwardly. “His name’s Trevor. He likes to wander off.”

Draco had nothing to say to that, and in a few moments Longbottom had shut their door.

“I’d bet anything someone’s taken the thing and hid it on purpose.” Draco shrugged again. “Last time his grandmother forced him out into society, someone stole his Remembrall--” it had been him, which he wasn’t going to mention-- “and she told him off in front of everyone for losing his things.”

Harry’s brow furrowed thoughtful and dark. “That’s terrible.”

“I suppose. It’s always been like that with the other purebloods. If you can’t show them you’re tough, they’ll eat you alive.

“Longbottom’s a dead-ringer for Hufflepuff for sure,” Draco continued, leaning in. “He’s just, you know, nice. Bit sad. His magic came in so late, half the country was expecting that he was a-- that he didn’t have any at all.”

“You shouldn’t talk about people like that.” Draco sat back a bit and blinked. He didn’t think he’d ever heard Harry that firm. “He hasn’t done anything wrong. From what it sounds like, I could end up in Hufflepuff myself.”

He couldn’t help but laugh a bit, even as the scolding put a blush on his cheeks. “Come off it, Harry, Hufflepuff is for bores! Not you.”

Harry looked unconvinced, maybe even cross. His frown was getting heavier. Draco’s own smile fell away. He didn’t understand Harry at all. How could someone so important, and so powerful and so _beloved_ think like Harry thought?

“You’re… You couldn’t be Hufflepuff, you know, they’re the common house.”

“Why? What makes them ‘common?’”

“It’s their whole… I dunno, motto. They take whoever’s left over, the scraps the other houses don’t want. The ones who aren’t especially anything.”

“Then that should suit me just fine.”

Draco gawped. “What are you talking about? You’re important.”

“No, I’m not!” Harry snapped. “And if I am, I never asked to be!”

… What was Draco supposed to do with _that_? What did that even mean? He slumped back in his seat in a fairly undignified way.

“Do you want to be in Hufflepuff?” It came out a bit more accusatory than he meant it, and he bit his tongue.

Harry just shrugged and scoffed. “Why not?”

Draco looked down at their shoes- shiny black dress shoes across from well-beaten trainers. He wanted to shout back at him that it was because Harry didn’t belong in a place like that, in a pile with the rejects. That, anyway, the long-term opportunities were better in other houses, it wasn’t as though he was prejudiced against it for no reason. That Harry was so bloody amazing that anything but the best wasn’t worth his time.

He bit his tongue harder. Harry had ended a war. He’d destroyed the man responsible for Draco’s own father’s death, without raising a finger. He was a child of prophecy. And he was so-- He was just-- _Draco_ was supposed to be in _Slytherin_. Not stupid, impoverished, lousy...

He sniffed once. “Then I could stand joining you there, I suppose. If you wanted to be there. I couldn’t very well leave you alone with them.”

He scuffed the toe of his shoe on the compartment floor and muttered, “Wouldn’t want to be on my own in Slytherin anyway. Be bored to tears.”

Draco looked up only because Harry snorted, and when he caught him looking at him with actual fondness, he could have just died. He’d haunt the Hogwarts Express as the happiest, stupidest ghost who ever passed.

“You’re not nice enough to be a Hufflepuff.”

“Is that a challenge?” Draco drew himself up in his seat. He flipped his bangs out of his face, this time very much for show.

That made Harry laugh again. “No, I already know you're a prat, I don't need to see anymore.”

“No, I mean it. We'll go to Hufflepuff. That's the real spirit of the house, is sticking by your... friends.”

If Harry noticed the way he stumbled over his words, he didn't comment on it. His eyes fairly shone when he laughed. They'd match Slytherin colors. But there was no point thinking of that. That Hufflepuff baby yellow might make his own skin look less washed out.

“Mum would be furious,” he confided. “She'd have to have all my things turned another color.”

When Harry looked a bit puzzled, he added, “For the house colors. Just about all my day robes are green.”

Harry got that look on his face, that laughing-concern. “Your family are all really serious about this, aren't you?”

The compartment door slid open without warning while Draco took a second to think of a fun retort. Some girl barged in. She had an overall fierce look despite half her height seemingly being made of loose coiled, curly hair.

“Have either of you seen a toad?” she asked in a grating, imperious voice. At least Longbottom had manners to recommend him, however pathetic he was.

As though to prove he was nice enough to be Hufflepuff, Draco sat up and gave the girl a thin but overall pleasant smile. “Longbottom’s already been by this way.”

She adopted a disconcerted expression, and looked around the compartment as though she’d see Trevor climbing on the walls. “How could one toad cause so much trouble on his own?”

Harry helpfully supplied, “Draco says someone might have stolen him. People like to pick on Longbottom, I think.”

The girl gave him a calculated look, and then passed it to Draco. “You’re Draco, then?”

It was getting increasingly hard to keep from being snotty. “Draco Malfoy.”

“Pleasure. I’m Hermione Granger.” She turned back to Harry. “And… you look familiar.”

Like he was preparing himself for what would come next, he said, “I’m Harry Potter.”

Granger’s mouth dropped a little, enough to make her unflattering buck teeth look even more prominent. “No way!” Unprompted, she sat down next to Harry, nearly in the pile of lollies and wrappers he had amassed next to himself. Draco’s posture got tighter. “I read all about you this summer. Neither of my parents is a wizard, and I’ve had _so_ much catching up to do!”

Harry smiled- bloody _smiled_ at her! Ugh! “I’m sort of the same. Draco’s been explaining how things work at Hogwarts since we’ve been on the train.”

“No way!” she said again. “Well, if you want to know anything properly about the castle, I have to recommend _Hogwarts: A History_. It’s completely fascinating. I must have read it twice all the way through by now. Did you know that--”

Granger broke off and leaned in a few inches, squinting; Harry leaned back at the same pace. “What happened to your glasses?”

As Harry was mumbling out a response, she whipped out her wand and cast, “ _Reparo_!”

The frame snapped back perfectly into order, leaving Harry blinking in surprise at the sudden clarity. Oh. Draco did not care for that at _all_.

“Thanks.” Harry took his glasses off and examined them, like it was an illusion that might wear off any second.

“Not at all. Any excuse to practice!”

“We’re getting close to the castle, aren’t we?” Draco’s voice was terse, and he hoped neither of them noticed. Judging by the looks on their faces, they didn’t. They might as well have forgotten he was there.

Granger looked out the window, as if she knew anything about where they were by the landscape. “Oh, yes I think so. I had better go and find Neville. And you ought to change into your robes, Harry.”

With as much emptyheaded confidence as she had entered with, Granger blustered back out. The door slid shut behind her, and she and all her bushy hair disappeared down the corridor.

Draco sniffed. “She’s a dead certain Ravenclaw.”

 

\-----

 

Draco sat with Harry and some student he didn’t know as their boat crossed over the lake. He had seen pictures of the castle before, but he was so struck with the image of it in the distant dark that he forgot to get even a little seasick. It wasn’t just the two of them in a fervor either. Every first year’s head was about to fly off in excitement.

The moment McGonagall left the room to prepare their entrance, Zabini slithered up towards them. “Draco,” he scolded lightly, in a way you could mistake for playfulness if you didn’t know him. “You shouldn’t have left us behind like that. The girls were just inconsolable.”

“I’m sure they survived.”

As though he hadn’t spoken, he turned now to examine Harry from top to bottom. Zabini was very different from Harry, taller by half a foot with broad shoulders and neat hair. “What an interesting friend you’ve made. I’m Zabini. Everyone’s been talking about you, Potter.”

“Oh?” Harry feigned surprise. “Draco didn’t mention _you_ at all.”

Zabini smiled with his lips parted, which was never a good sign. His teeth were perfect and glaringly white. “Draco, that’s so naughty. Neglecting us like that. You must introduce me properly later. Since you find Harry Potter’s company so _engaging_.”

He walked away in a swish of robes, and Draco became acutely aware that everyone had heard them when no ambient noise picked up to comfort him. It wasn’t the first time Zabini had danced around calling him a blood traitor, it was hardly even the dozenth. Half the other first years wouldn’t know what had just happened, but for those who had…

Draco stared with a furrowed brow at the ground while everyone else was looking up at the enchanted ceiling.

“Are you alright?”

He started as Harry murmured in his ear. Everyone was distracted watching the Sorting Hat chortle and recite to itself, and Draco wanted to tell Harry to pay attention, that this was the interesting kind of magic that he ought to stare and be impressed by. Harry had to tilt his head up to get close to him. Candlelight shone on his scar.

“Yeah, it’s nothing. Zabini is just like that.”

“What did he mean?”

Draco opened and shut his mouth. “It doesn’t matter.”

“You can tell me.” Harry looked so eager and so honest that Draco could cry. “I’ve dealt with people like that all my life.”

“I’ll tell you later, alright?”

Harry looked about to protest and insist, but just nodded. The sorting hadn’t even begun yet and Draco was already exhausted. He wanted to sit down and eat and go to bed. What were the beds like here? He’d never shared a room before; his mum had told him that Slytherins bunked by twos, so with any luck he wouldn’t have to share with Zabini or Nott.

A rough nudge between his ribs broke him out of his thoughts. He stiffened and shuffled closer to Harry’s side. He’d know Bulstrode’s elbows anywhere. How childish. She jostled him a few more times as the sorting started, before Harry took matters into his own hands and smushed himself through the crowd to stand in between them. The sight of the two of them was comical: tiny, scrawny Harry coming halfway up Bulstrode’s shoulder, staring over the rims of his glasses while she fairly cowered. Draco smiled privately. Harry’d do well in Gryffindor.

When Granger was called up, Harry gave him a nudge of his own- gently- as though Draco wasn’t already paying attention to someone who had managed to become one of his least favorite people in 10 minutes of interaction. She looked absurdly nervous, and he had to roll his eyes. It wasn’t going to eat her precious brains or anything.

The Hat nestled down into Granger’s hair, muttering to itself for a few moments while she looked like she might faint. At last, it cried out, “GRYFFINDOR!” and allowed her to bound away joyfully to her new table.

Draco raised his brows. That was a strange fluke. He would have expected that sort of know-it-all smugness to be right at home in Ravenclaw. Nobody who read a great tome like _Hogwarts: A History_ twice in one summer for fun could stand to be anywhere else, could they?

He could feel Harry looking at him, and he shrugged. What was he supposed to say? Granger must have more going on in her head than he expected. Her little crusade for Longbottom’s toad was Gryffindor enough. She must have thought she was very noble. After a moment of visible thought, he crossed his arms and nodded, satisfied. Harry shrugged back.

He thought nothing else of it until it was Longbottom’s turn to go up. He practically tripped over his own feet just to get there. Draco looked around; only a few more students to go before him.

“GRYFFINDOR!”

Whipping his head around, he was sure for a moment that he must have missed something, until he saw Longbottom making a dull, sort-of-stunned face and lumbering to the far table. Neville Longbottom, a Gryffindor? He was sure stranger sortings had happened, but not many. If there was anything Draco knew about Longbottom, it was that he was a sad, sad boy, and a helpless coward. He’d been knocked around by everyone they knew since they were old enough to shove. So then, why?

What had the Hat seen in someone like him?

“Draco Malfoy.”

That was him. He took a deep breath.

“Wish me luck,” he whispered to Harry as he moved out from the crowd and towards the Hat.

Before today, Draco hadn’t expected to be nervous for his sorting. He was from a long line of Slytherins, he was born and bred for Slytherin. It was practically in his blood. It was inevitable that he turn out a fellow snake. But as he stepped up towards the stool, he found himself shaking. Everything could change. And why shouldn’t things change? Maybe not great big changes all at once, but little things at a manageable pace? He sat down on the stool, facing his school with his breath held tight. Why couldn’t the son of a Malfoy and a Black end up being something a bit different than expected?

McGonagall lowered the hat onto his head.

“SLYTHERIN!”

His heart plummeted.

There was a round of very polite applause from the Slytherin table, but Draco couldn’t even pay attention to that because he was rooted to the spot, looking for Harry in the crowd of first years. He wanted to tell them it was a mistake, to try again, that he couldn’t go there alone. McGonagall gave him a push, and he obediently hopped down off the stool.

The walk to the Slytherin table might as well have lasted hours. There were a few eyes on him, most of them familiar. No doubt he’d be seeing more familiar faces join the table as the Sorting progressed. Some older students moved aside to let him sit. He immediately flopped over with his head on his arms. He’d survive. He’d write to his mum every other day, and he’d see Harry in his classes, and some of the older years would take some pity on him in the name of house unity, and he’d survive. It wasn’t the end of the world.

“Harry Potter.”

A hush fell over the Hall. Try as he might to sit and stew on his own thoughts, Draco could hear Harry’s footsteps as he approached the Sorting Hat’s stool. Harry would go to Gryffindor, more than likely. His parents were Gryffindors, just like Draco’s parents were Slytherins. And Harry was important and good, and had that big stupid heart that had stood up for Longbottom and for him for no reason at all.

And how was it still quiet? It had to have been a minute at least. What was the record for the longest the Sorting Hat had sat on a head? This was getting--

“SLYTHERIN!”

He sat bolt upright. If things had been quiet before, they were dead silent now; he imagined he could hear the house elves cooking a few floors below them. Harry hadn’t moved. The Hat was still on his head, flopped over with the brim almost obscuring his face. He pushed it back a little, and Draco met his eyes. He made a frantic gesture with his hand for Harry to get the hell over there already.

Harry smiled. He sprang off the chair and let the Hat tumble off- to be caught by a startled McGonagall before it hit the floor- and practically ran to the Slytherin table. The student next to Draco budged over without a word to make room for their latest addition.

Someone started clapping. Draco didn’t care who. But it spread like wildfire, and soon the whole table was on their feet practically screaming their approval. If for no other reason, they were all delighted to get one over on the other houses, who were all still stunned into silence.

Draco had grabbed him by the arms, and he didn’t think he’d ever smiled so hard. “I thought for sure-- I was sure you were gonna be Gryffindor!”

Harry didn’t seem to care about the applause much either. “Are you mad? I’d be bored to tears!”


	2. Draco Malfoy and the Glass Twins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all! This was uh. A long one. And based on the way I've divided this fic in my head, it's probably going to be the standard length of chapters from now on. But since I managed to get this together by today, I get to declare the 25th of the month as the official tentative fic update day!
> 
> This is a big Draco and Harry chapter, with the introduction of the third member of the new trio and some of the quirks of Slytherin house. Plus the introduction of the stone plotline! I thought it might be fun for the first year to see the boys solve the same mystery we know and love but from a different angle, based on the group's new set of skills and resources. And I hope I can make that entertaining for y'all!
> 
> Also, thank you so much for everyone who has read and commented and left kudos and all the other super super kind reception I've gotten with this. Every single one of you put a big ass smile on my face.

The Slytherins were in raptures over Harry. And why shouldn’t they be? Even half the children of Death Eaters seemed ready to swear fealty to him as their new Dark Lord. He handled the attention with surprising grace even though it clearly embarrassed him. But he was always sure to turn back to Draco whenever the older years had finished chattering at him. Harry had already decided who his friends were.

The other houses, though deprived of him, were little better. Particularly excitable or ambitious students kept popping over to their table throughout supper to shake his hand or ask him excessively personal questions. Perhaps, because he was in Slytherin, they felt emboldened to make inroads with him. Future Dark Lord, indeed. He maintained a smile and an open hand between gulps of pumpkin juice and with his mouth full of mashed potato.

He really was a natural, Draco admired, but he was also pretty plainly the worst Slytherin ever sorted.

“Were you alright before?” Draco asked during one of the impasses. “Earlier, when the headmaster was giving his little speech. You looked in pain.”

“Yeah, it was…” Harry frowned and rubbed his scar. Draco saw a few eyes blip over towards them to get a glimpse of it under Harry’s fingers.

“What?”

“It was nothing,” Harry assured. He dropped his hand. Draco was staring at him, plainly unsatisfied. What a bald-faced lie! He and Harry would have to work on making him less obvious about it.

As though he was trying to distract Draco, Harry gestured up towards the staff table. “Who is that man there? The… pale, horrid-looking one?”

A girlish laugh startled its way out of Draco at that, and he covered his mouth. The distraction worked, he could say that much for sure. “That’s our head of house!” he whispered loudly.

“Oh no!” Harry leaned in closer to whisper back. “He’s been staring at me all evening like he’s going to turn me into dust!”

“You’re safe for now,” said a voice behind Draco which made them both jump. “Snape wouldn’t dare in front of the headmaster.”

He turned, embarrassed to be overheard, to look at the girl to his right. She was tall and straight-backed, with long black braids trailing nearly down to the bench. Silver and green ribbon had been threaded into them. Her skin was a warm shade of brown, fairer than Harry’s, and the amusement in her eyes as she smiled down at him was almost condescending. A prefect badge was pinned to her robes.

He nodded and hoped he wasn’t blushing. “Yes, you’re right. Severus looks mean, but he wouldn’t hurt one of his own.”

The prefect snorted. “He might if he catches you calling him that.”

“I’m not scared of him,” Draco sniffed; he tossed his hair and heard Harry chuckle, before some older girl scampered up and distracted him. “He’s a family friend.”

“Oh, well if that’s the case,” she threw back sardonically, “he’ll be delighted to have a firstie mouthing off to him. Be my guest.”

Draco drew himself up a bit and looked her from head to toe, knowing she was right but not sure if he should forgive her for it. Finally he said, “I quite like your ribbons.”

“I quite like yours.” She nodded to the little self-tying black bow keeping his hair back.

Well. She was alright then. “Draco Malfoy,” he said, extending a hand.

She shook it. “Gemma Farley. I suppose I’ll be showing you to your rooms in a little while.”

“Well,” said Harry with straining patience to the looky-loo hovering by him, “seeing as I was literally an infant, I don’t remember much, thanks.”

The Ravenclaw made a face and backed off towards her table. Draco had the urge to lean on Harry’s shoulder, and sublimated it by telling him not to bother answering any more stupid questions tonight.

  
  


\-----

  
  


“The dungeon?” Harry had whispered to him as they followed the crowd of Slytherins down the hall. They’d lagged towards the back of the group, and behind them was just Gemma, keeping up their pace and pretending not to listen to them. “This place has got a dungeon?”

Draco rolled his eyes. “It’s a castle, Harry.”

“And we’re meant to sleep there?” The look on his face was less disgust, and more… trepidation?

It was sometimes hard to tell what Harry was thinking. He’d learned by now how to read the clique; with Zabini, he sometimes wondered if they could read one another’s minds. But Harry was so new and so different from any of them. He hadn’t realized how long it had been since he’d known someone _new_.

“They’re not going to hang us from the walls, you know. It’ll be as nice as your room at home, I’m sure.”

Harry didn’t look comforted by the notion.

He couldn’t quite blame Harry for not believing him. He’d be nervous if he didn’t know better. The dungeon was cool and damp, increasingly so as they wound into the tunnels below the lake. The lamps had bigger gaps between them than they did in the upper corridors, even though down here there would be no natural light. It was a reminder to the students of Slytherin not to let their guard down. They must treat every room with the care they would learn by navigating the dark and potentially dangerous dungeon.

As they got towards the entrance, the first years were shuffled up to the front so they could see it done. Gemma put her hand up against a seemingly blank part of the wall and turned to the crowd.

“At the beginning of the year, we always use the same password,” she announced. “The first password given by Salazar Slytherin after the founding of Hogwarts. From then, passwords are set fortnightly by ol’ Sal himself. If he likes the look of you, he might give it to you. If not, you’re on your own to find it.

“Never take anything for granted. The castle will be yours because you make it yours by knowing it. ‘Even the stones have something to tell you, if you take care.’”

Harry looked at the wall beside them and reached out his hand. His palm slid against it, and he huffed out a breath, half a laugh. He blurted out, “It’s warm. That’s the trick, isn’t it?”

Gemma gave a brisk nod, her mouth quirked approvingly. “Exactly. Every little thing counts.”

Draco nudged him in the side with a smirk. Harry ducked his head and smiled back.

Turning back to the wall, Gemma spoke, loud enough to carry across the crowd of Slytherins waiting to get into their room. “‘ _Gloria_.’”

A soft crack resounded from somewhere deep in the wall. He could just make out where a seam had formed through stone that just a moment ago had seemed to be a solid single hewn block of granite. The stones creaked and settled, and then whooshed open as easily as opening a dumbwaiter box, to reveal a short, unlit corridor. Gemma stepped inside, leading them along blind. The corridor took a steep l-bend which seemed for a moment as though it would leave them in pitch darkness, only for the other side to emerge into a breathtaking cool glow. The teal-tinted light of Slytherin beckoned them in.

The common room glistened with silver and magic. It was warm and insulated compared to the dank cellar air just outside. It was gorgeous. Shiny black stone blasted like glass lined the floor, and facades of pillars laid into the granite walls arced up into the low-vaulted ceiling. The decorations- tapestries, mirrors, portraits- were reserved, but comfortable- overdone by his mum’s tastes, but then, she was very, _very_ refined. The room was clearly made up for studying, which was sensible. Slytherins didn’t tend to be the most sociable. Draco didn’t plan on spending more time than necessary out of his room.

He looked over to Harry, knowing he had to catch his first impression. He had been right about his eyes. The light from the lamps and fireplace made them a shade of green he didn’t have a word for. Harry stared around in wonderment. His eyes caught on a portrait hanging by the dormitory entrance and his mouth dropped a bit. He’d never seen a moving painting before, had he? The subject was old but very handsome, sitting at his desk, surrounded by books and the skulls of various beasts, reading with a casual air.

“Salazar Slytherin,” he whispered to Harry. “He must set the password.”

“Wow.” Harry dragged a hand through his hair.

“Do you like it?”

Harry glanced over at him with a winded smile. “It’s a _lot_ nicer than my room at home.”

Their eyes were inevitably drawn to the glass. The room was dominated along two of the walls by a deep, dark, blackish green. The nighttime lake pressed in on them, swallowing the pale light and reflecting it back with the signature tinge of green. In the dark, yet darker things shifted. Everyone huddled in a bit closer as they all pressed into the middle of the common room.

Before the fireplace stood a tall figure in billowy black robes, faced away from them. He raised one hand, palm out, the wide sleeve of his outer robe dripping down off of him. The room went quiet.

He turned on his heel, hands folded in front of himself. “I think I shall need no introductions.”

Severus never got less theatrical.

Everyone in Slytherin house was halfblood at least, so of course they all knew of him, from older siblings, from parents, friends, rumors. But Draco had the advantage of knowing Severus since he was a baby. His mum’s confidant since his father had died. Without him to take some of the burden off her, Draco might not have made it.

A lot of people didn’t seem to know what to do with him. Spies were like that. But among the Slytherin families, regardless of sympathy, you had to respect him. He’d done good work for the house in his time.

He spoke low and softly, but still able to project to the back of the room as though he’d cast a _sonorous_. His voice glided the same as he did. “Many of you have had family in Slytherin for generations, and you considered your entry into this house as a given. This is a conceit, born of ignorance of what this house stands for… and what it means to belong here. One which I will shortly correct. You were bound for Slytherin because, of all your classmates, you show the most… promise, the most potential to shape the future in your own image.”

Draco glanced to the side at Crabbe and Goyle and held down a snicker. What a joke! Severus really flattered himself with that one. He stepped forward, and began pacing a slow oval in front of them all.

“Take nothing for granted. The defining quality of a Slytherin is how one uses one’s resources. That means your minds, your bodies, your family, and your friends. Slytherin is not here to coddle you or comfort you. It is not fair or kind; and neither is the world. Its purpose is always, in all things… to teach you.

“Now. As head of house, I have a few broad rules which you would do well to follow. First: do not embarrass me. Second: do not irritate me. Third: do not let me catch you doing anything that would require me to punish you. Preserve the respectability of Slytherin. That is all.”

Severus flicked one hand, as though to show that his speech was over. Everyone relaxed slightly, but didn’t dare speak yet. Parkinson started to say something, but Zabini knocked her in the back of the shoulder and she shut up.

At last, he stopped and looked at them as though he wasn’t sure why they were still there. Then he muttered, “Ah, yes…” and raised one thin eyebrow. “I trust… you are capable of selecting your rooms with maturity.”

When he received no protests or signs, he reached into his robe and retrieved a set of keys.

“Under no circumstances will you receive a second key. As Salazar Slytherin refused to suffer bunglers and idiots, so too will I. And,” here he sneered, “do not count on any frivolous duplication spells to save you.”

There were a few muted chuckles from older years.

He continued, pulling pairs of keys off the ring, “Particularly first years will lack the skill and nuance to truly copy these keys… Even the so-called prodigies.”

Severus turned his eyes fully onto Harry for the first time since they’d arrived in the common room, and the temperature dropped. Everyone stopped breathing.

Eventually it was Severus who looked away, to return to the keys; Harry kept staring. Draco tugged on his sleeve to get his attention, and shook his head. Instead of doing the sensible thing and dropping it, Harry raised his hand.

Severus’s eyes caught the movement and flickered over, and then back down to the keys, completely ignoring him. “Each key is bonded to its pair. Let this serve as a reminder of the dangers of an unchecked independence. Arrogance is the death of true ambition.”

“‘Scuse me, Professor?”

Draco yanked on Harry’s sleeve hard. He didn’t manage to send them back in time so that Harry wouldn’t open his mouth, like he wished he could have done. All he succeeded in doing was getting his new friend to hiss out an “Ow!” as he pulled his arm away.

“Mr. Potter.” Severus’s voice was low, quiet, careful, like a man looking for the optimal way to grasp a thorny weed to pull it from the ground. Beyond blinking once, Harry didn’t react.

Severus took a few gliding steps forward. Their difference in height was dramatic, and Severus tilting his head back and looking down his long nose at Harry only made him look taller. He released a breath, almost a sigh.

“As loath as I am,” he murmured, “to satisfy a pathological need for attention… I see my expectations have not been understood. I will not be defied, interrupted, or disrespected in any manner. Least of all, by my own students. Do I make myself… clear?”

This he addressed to the rest of the house. Sounds of assent rumbled around the room. Harry, for his part, stayed perfectly silent and still.

Severus turned again, his robes whooshing past the two of them as he strode over to the entrance to the dorms. “Approach by year to receive your keys. The next insubordination from anyone will earn you a detention.”

The tension broke somewhat as students began to move around. The two of them were getting a lot of looks. Well, Harry was getting a lot of looks, and Draco was nearby. There was no telling if that little standoff would win him admiration for his guts or scorn for his stupidity, or mark him as an outsider. A target.

“What were you even going to say to him?” Draco asked incredulously, hovering towards the back of the crowd with the other first years.

Harry shrugged. His expression hadn’t lightened at all. “I wanted to know what we’d do if the keys were lost. Or stolen.”

“You sleep in the common room, obviously.” Draco’s shoulders jerked up reflexively and almost knocked Zabini in the chin. He’d spoken close enough to Draco’s ear that it gave him chills.

“Until you find them,” he added sharply, looking back over his shoulder to find Zabini at a reasonable distance. “You can’t take someone else’s key into your own room.”

Zabini had his usual placid smirk on. “You’re not _supposed_ to be able to.”

Draco pinched his lips together. Even with all of Zabini’s grace and talent and, everything, he wasn’t near powerful enough to break those old wards. If they’d held up since the 1700s, they’d hold now.

Turning back to Harry, he explained, “It’s a social game. Like a way of keeping each other in line.”

Harry had a look on his face like that sounded completely insane to him, but- his eyes flicked up to Zabini, still hovering near Draco’s back. If he had any protests to make, it surely wasn’t going to be in front of him. It seemed there were some rules that were universal, Muggle or wizard.

The students in the common room pared down to the first years little by little. When Draco stepped up to Severus, he flashed him a corner of a smile. Severus hardly looked up from where he had been counting off keys. There always seemed to be the same number on the ring, he realized, even after pairs were pulled away.

“Malfoy and Zabini, then?”

All trace of a smile vanished. He stood ramrod straight and blurted out, “Oh-- no, sir.”

That got him to look up, fixing tired black eyes onto him. How was he already so tired when classes hadn’t even started?

Draco took Harry’s sleeve again. Severus’s face morphed from blank boredom to a sour twist. Draco might as well have stuck an acid pop in his mouth. “Me and Harry,” he said. He didn’t have to say it, Severus knew what he meant without it, but... it gave him a bit of a thrill.

 _Him and Harry._ Merlin.

“... And you’re positive?”

If they’d been at Malfoy Manor, Draco would have snarked at him for that one. He bit his tongue and tilted his head. “Positive, sir.”

Severus dropped the keys into his hand. He bade his head of house a quick thanks and pulled Harry towards the dormitories. The path split quickly, with boys directed to one side and girls to the other. On their side stood seven doors of black wood, and students were milling about outside them, chatting, not ready to go in yet. A lock perched above each doorknob, carved into the open mouth of a snake, with a keyhole in its throat.

“Down at the end, firsties,” called a short boy with a big nose and a shaved head- Draco had heard someone call him Travers, he thought.

“This can’t be enough rooms for everyone.”

Draco made a slightly condescending face over his shoulder. “Harry--”

Harry scoffed, “No, don’t tell me. Some kind of insane magic door that doesn’t surprise anyone but me?”

“Yeah, dead on.”

He turned his key in the lock and swung the door open. Inside the room stood, predictably, a pair of beds, dominated by heavy green and black duvets. The headboards were ornately wrought and silvered. On one end there was a door to the joint bathroom. Their bags had already been dropped off, and everything was perfectly orderly. All in all, it was nice. He’d have to adjust to a rather smaller room than at home, but it was nice.

Harry stepped inside without a word and sat down gingerly on one of the beds. In case any of the others were coming up behind them, Draco shut the door and went to unpack. Harry had an odd look on his face, and he thought it best to maybe leave him to acclimate a bit.

“Is it good?” he asked, pulling out his dressing gown.

“It’s perfect.”

Smiling, Draco started to change. He’d just gotten his robes unbuttoned when he had a rush of self-consciousness, and decided to change in the bathroom. Harry had put on some of those raggedy clothes when he re-emerged, and he still had the nerve to stare at Draco like he was dressed strangely.

“What are you wearing?”

“A dressing gown?” He put his arms out and turned in a circle to let Harry see all sides of it (and because it made the skirt of it flare out a bit in a fun way). It was white and silver, honestly one of his simpler ones.

“You go to bed in a dress?”

“And I suppose you were wearing a dress all day, too? They’re robes, Harry.”

With a yawn, he collapsed onto the bed. Harry looked very skeptical about the dressing gown still, but Draco was too tired to start a fight. He crawled up to the head of the bed in order to reach over and twist off the light by his nightstand. His side of the room fell into shadow.

“My scar was hurting earlier.”

“Hm?” Draco looked up with his brows furrowed. “At the feast? But how can it, it’s a scar.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never felt that before, not that I can remember. And… it only happened when Snape looked at me.”

“Did you get it after, in the common room or anything?”

“No. I don’t know what to think. But when I felt it, I just _knew_ there was danger nearby. Does that make sense?”

Draco didn’t know what to say to that besides a bland reassurance that Severus wasn’t dangerous. Rude, maybe, but… Harry turned off his light, and Draco took that as his cue that they were going to bed. He settled down under the covers, already feeling heavy with his need for rest.

“What did Zabini mean before?”

Draco blinked and rolled over. In the dark, he could make out the vague shape of Harry under the covers, looking at him “What d’you mean?”

“Before we were sorted. When he was saying all that rubbish about-- I dunno, but it made you upset, whatever it was.”

“It’s--”

“Don’t say it’s nothing.” He could hear Harry scowl. “I told you my secret.”

“Mine’s not a secret. And it is nothing. I just…” He bit his thumb, because it was dark and he knew Harry couldn’t see him do it.

Everything went still for a moment. There was a rustle of blankets as Harry sat up and hunched over. “Was it because of me?”

“No!” Draco burst out immediately. Then he bit his thumb and thought for a few moments. “I mean, not entirely. A little bit, maybe.”

He took a deep breath. “They’ve always been like that, you know? Because…” He lowered his voice to be nearly inaudible. “Because they think You-Know-Who killed my father.”

Harry leaned over until his head touched the bedspread. “I’m so sorry. Are they…?”

“Yeah. Their parents were his followers. And, um.” Draco could feel himself choking on the confession he was about to make, and for a moment he thought about swallowing it down. But it wasn’t like he could hide it forever. Not here, of all places. “And my father was, too. He was a Death Eater.”

Harry didn’t say anything. At first Draco didn’t know if he’d been too quiet to hear, but then the dreadful truth settled on him. He chewed on his thumb, knowing that his body was threatening to cry. He was so pathetic. It wasn’t even the topic; he’d learned to talk about it without crying, as he’d aged. But he couldn’t stop thinking about how still and quiet Harry was being. He must be so furious with Draco. He must hate being here with him.

The long stretch of silence unnerved him too much not to break it. “Nobody knows what happened, you know. Just, he was found dead. Nobody else survived who would have seen it.”

“I’m sorry.”

His heart jumped up into his throat. “Why are you sorry?”

“Because he was your dad! What am I meant to say, ‘glad he’s dead?’” Harry unfurled from his hunched position and got up to pace. His bare feet tapped softly on the stone. “And I figure-- you know, it’s not _your_ fault. You’ve got nothing good to say about Voldemort or else you wouldn’t want to be friends with me, would you?”

“I could be pretending, to fool you.”

Harry stopped. “Are you?”

He picked at the seam of his dressing gown. “No. But… not everybody’s as nice as I am.”

“I know.”

  
  


\-----

  
  


He couldn’t deny, things were awkward for the next few days. Harry could insist all he wanted that Draco’s parentage didn’t make him think differently of him, but he couldn’t stop himself from _acting_ differently. But maybe Draco was being hysterical. Harry was distracted with integrating into wizarding society and starting classes on subjects he knew less than nothing about. Plus the bombardment of attention was quickly becoming a strain.

The only person who seemed to completely defy the intrigue of Harry Potter, was Severus.

The other professors ranged from professionally interested to fawning on their first day in class with Harry. Well, and there was Binns, but he was hardly a person and didn’t get excited or curious about anything, Draco was fairly sure. He couldn’t name a student he’d taught in the last 20 years, or anything that had happened in that time. Nobody was unpleasant, though.

Severus wasn’t exactly ‘unpleasant’ himself at first. Didn’t make any snide comments like he had the first night in the common room. In fact, he did his best not to acknowledge Harry’s existence at all. He could raise his hand with a question, go up to the front to fetch an ingredient, make a perfectly decent potion- Britomart, he was half sure Harry could blow himself up and Severus wouldn’t react but for a repulsed curl of the lip. Even when Harry stood right beside him during the lesson, Severus would dispense his praises and critiques only to Draco.

Harry didn’t mind. Draco couldn’t get him to open up about it, but it was obvious Severus’s dislike was mutual.

“You know he’s not all bad, don’t you?” he’d tried to ask after their second class.

“Draco, all I know about Snape is he made my scar hurt at the feast. And that he’s a monster to Neville. So what if he can’t remember what snake fangs do yet?”

Longbottom? Draco’s mouth twisted. “It’s only tough love. He’s hard on students.”

“He’s a bully. If you were doing poorly he wouldn’t go after you like that. How’s he supposed to learn anything?”

“I wouldn’t do as poorly as Neville.”

That had just seemed to make Harry angry. Draco didn’t know how to win with him sometimes.

Next class, Harry had sat them at the potion station right next to the Slytherin-Gryffindor border that had naturally formed. Longbottom and the youngest Weasley- that he knew of, at least- were at the next station over. It wasn’t hard to guess why Harry insisted on the spot, and Draco hadn’t the energy to fight him on it.

It hadn’t taken long for the abuse to start. Draco had been so focused on his potion before, but now he couldn’t keep himself from noticing. Every time Severus got near Longbottom, he’d make another stupid mistake and get sneered at for it. Soon enough his cauldron bloomed with black smoke. Weasley’s wasn’t much better, but Longbottom’s potion was definitely the most tragic failure of the bunch. By contrast, he and Harry had produced a decent if sickly pink puff of smoke on their first try.

Severus descended on him. “Mr. Longbottom, if you were to apply this abomination to your partner, you would quickly find yourself permanently deprived of Mr. Weasley’s company, and in even more abject a state than you are now. Make a less pathetic attempt this time.”

Draco didn’t look over, not wanting to watch the poor kid quake and hold back tears. But he did glance up when, as soon as Severus had brushed by to the next station, Harry slipped over to them.

“Weasley, right?” Draco heard him ask. “Trade with me, yeah?”

Like the moron he clearly was, Weasley puffed up and got in his way. “What do you want, snake?”

“Shove off, I’m trying to help. I know how to make this one.” Weasley stood in disbelieving silence, so Harry just went around him to get to Neville. “Here, Neville, look at the first bit of instruction…”

Longbottom accepted the help gratefully. All Weasley could do was stand there and stare with the look on his face that Draco- and increasingly more of their classmates each minute- wore. Everyone who wasn’t already ogling the spectacle looked over as the professor swooped towards them.

“Back to your station, Potter,” he nearly growled.

Harry moved himself between Severus and Longbottom. “I’m only helping, sir.”

“Be that as it may. This is a potions classroom, not a charity ball. You will not give assistance to students other than your partner. Now. Back to your station.”

Harry scowled and looked ready to tip the cauldron onto Severus’s front, but thankfully he just turned and obeyed. Before Draco could get out a scolding word to him, Harry snapped, “I just wanted to help. It’s not right to treat a student like that. He could teach Longbottom to do it the right way, it’s not a hard potion. You taught it to me more than he did.”

“Keep your voice down, Harry.”

He seethed so much for the remainder of class that Draco wasn’t surprised when he brought his idea up later. Draco really, really didn’t like the sound of it.

“Why do you care so much?”

Harry shrugged, exasperated, because he’d explained it to Draco maybe five times now. “I’m sticking it to Snape. Will you believe that one at least?”

It didn’t satisfy Draco. Nothing would satisfy him enough to be okay with having to ask Zabini to share his station on Monday. But he’d live with it. There were many less pleasant things Harry could do to him.

It was only when Monday Potions class came and Draco looked over to see Harry actually smiling with Longbottom that he realized that some of those unpleasant things might be happening right now.

  
  


\-----

  
  


Draco was beyond excited to fly. He’d never ridden anything but the slow and safe training brooms his mum had bought. He was mad with wanting to soar and rush and spin like the players did in the posters. If they hadn’t been in a public hallway he might have been twirling in circles around Harry as they made their way towards the castle terraces. Harry, for his part, looked just as energized.

“And then-- oh, Merlin, I doubt they’ll let us try out for the team, they’re still full up this year and first years never make the cut, but if I had any choice I’d play seeker.” He raised a hand to rest on top of his head. “See, you’ve got to be small and very quick to be a seeker. Their job is to catch the snitch- it’s this little golden ball and when you catch it the game ends. You know, before they made the snitch they used to use a little bird--”

“That’s awful!” came a shrill voice from nearby.

Draco turned on his heel, scowling, to see his favorite bushy-haired brat. She was looking at him, incredulous and maybe offended. “It’s rude to listen to someone else’s conversation, you know.”

“But did they really? They’d chase some poor bird all over the field?” Draco wanted to turn and walk faster to try and outpace her and her stupid questions, but she had longer legs than Harry, and he didn’t want to leave him behind.

“Well of course they did. They didn’t just come up with snitches on a whim. Perhaps you ought to add _Quidditch Through the Ages_ to your personal library, Granger, if you care so much.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “I haven’t gotten to it yet, that’s all.”

He didn’t have to look to know that Harry was rolling his eyes, because a moment later he was tugging on Draco’s sleeve and directing him out onto the lawn.

Throughout the lesson, he was near to jumping out of his skin with his eagerness to just get on with it. This kiddy stuff was exhausting him. He knew how to hover! Everyone knew how to hover! They only had 4 flight seminars in a year. It just wasn’t fair to hold the entire class hostage just for the sake of the students who’d grown up without it. It was all Muggleborns like Granger, probably the Weasleys were so poor they couldn’t afford practice brooms, and cases like Longbottom who were held to the ground by their own pathetic demeanors.

He watched Longbottom ascend, out of control of his broom and slipping into a panic coma. When he finally reacted, it was too late to bail, but he did anyway.

WHUMPF!

Draco cringed as Longbottom’s body hit the field. He could hear the whimpering from where he stood in line; he was curling around himself as Hooch chastised him for his silliness. She finally got him to unfurl, and inspected his body. Aside from a bloody nose and a broken wrist, he was unhurt. Draco was halfway surprised he didn’t bounce all the way down to the lake. That seemed to be the only thing he was any good for.

“Everyone keep your feet on the ground while I take Mr. Longbottom to the hospital wing--”

“Professor?”

Harry stepped forward from the line, broom no longer in his hand. Impatiently, Hooch gave him a quick once over. “What is it, Mr. Potter?”

He paused for a second, and got a look that Draco had come to recognize as his improvising face. “I can take him. So you won’t have to stop the lesson.”

Murmurs broke out among all the students. Harry hunched his shoulders, and his hair twisted slightly, like it was growing longer to hide him.

Draco grabbed his sleeve and whispered in his ear, “Do you know where the hospital wing is?”

“I’ll figure it out,” Harry whispered back.

Longbottom murmured something to Hooch at the same time, and she raised her brows, never once taking her eyes off Harry. “Very well. You may go.”

Harry jogged forward so he could take Longbottom under the arm; for a moment, Draco almost darted to them, sure that Longbottom would keel over and Harry would be crushed. But he was fine. Longbottom hunched over a bit, and leaned on Harry more than he had to, but he wasn’t going to kill Harry.

“And Mr. Potter,” Hooch called out to them. Harry half-turned to look at her. “5 points to Slytherin, for cooperation between houses.”

Harry smiled at her and nodded. “Thank you, Professor.”

“That’s the kind of teamwork that lies at the heart of good Quidditch,” Hooch said as she turned to the rest of the class. “Now, where were we? Everyone straddle your brooms.”

Draco hovered easily on the broom as the rest of the class took their places, and over the tops of heads he watched Harry and Longbottom shuffle their way into the castle. Even from there, he could tell that Longbottom was smiling. It just wasn’t _fair_.

  
  


\-----

  
  


He tossed a little glass ball from hand to hand. It seemed taking Longbottom’s Remembralls was beginning to become a pattern for him. This one at least he hadn’t stolen- not technically, not compared to the last one. It had just been lying on the ground for anyone to take. Zabini had eyed it, but he let Draco pick it up. Probably, he thought it was as good a joke as Draco did, that he kept collecting the things.

The fact that he had two of them had given him an idea. Remembralls were surprisingly complicated for how useless they were. But for that very reason, there were all sorts of fun things you could do with them, with just a little bit of tampering. He had a book at home, a sort of naughty book for breaking your toys in creative ways, for cheating. Quill enchantments, snitch-confounding charms, spells to transfigure playing cards, illusions to make two-way curtains and walls. That sort of thing. Most of them were out of his depth, but the Remembrall trick he had in mind was fairly simple.

In the letter he wrote to his mum that night, he asked her to send him the second Remembrall and the book. A couple of days later, she obliged to send him the trinket, but refused the book. No son of hers was going to sneak his way through classes until he proved he had earned the right to do so.

It didn’t matter. He remembered the spell well enough, he was sure.

All that morning since breakfast, he’d been vibrating with the need to try the spell out. He didn’t dare muck about in front of McGonagall, but they had Charms just before lunch. That would be the perfect time for it. Flitwick was an airheaded old man and always distracted with his lesson plan or bustling around among the students.

They were meant to just be practicing their levitating charms. But Draco already felt comfortable with them, he’d been practicing it since the summer, so instead he put the Remembralls on his desk, side by side. Harry glanced over at them and frowned.

“Is that--?”

“They’re mine,” he assured too quickly. “There’s this trick-- it’s really great, you’ll love this.”

He pulled out his wand and twirled it in his fingers once. He kept his voice down so Flitwick wouldn’t notice over the scattered chanting around the room. “You know how Remembralls link to their owners, to tell you when you’ve forgotten something? Well, there’s this way of, of changing the spell on it, once you have two of them-- to send messages!”

Harry’s attention was on him now, keeping his wand high but neglecting his feather. Draco preened and wiggled just a bit in his seat. He lay the tip of his wand on one of the clear balls. Visualized a silver line connecting the two of them, unbreakable and elastic. And then was, uh… Right, the words. “ _Near as twins, clear as glass_.”

He repeated the phrase a few times, and drew his wand from one to the other to connect them. Then he set his wand down. He didn’t remember if the silver line was supposed to manifest or just stay in his head. Suddenly he wished he hadn’t invited Harry to watch.

Picking up one, he ordered, “Say ‘hello.’”

Neither one reacted.

He hunched over the desk, scowling at the Remembralls hard enough that they should rightly shatter. He nudged the other one with the tip of his wand, sending it rolling a few inches.

“I don’t know why it didn’t…?”

“Mr. Malfoy!”

He jolted up straight, eyes a touch wild. Flitwick stood with his hands on his hips, smiling despite the scold in his tone. “I understand that you’re a very confident young man, but that’s no call to be playing with your balls in my class.”

The students erupted in a shock of laughter. Draco was instantly beet red, holding his breath to restrain a scream. The pair of Remembralls shot off his desk and into Flitwick’s open hand. The two of them together were nearly too much for his tiny fingers to hold onto.

“Five points from Slytherin. See me after the hour if you’d like to get these back,” Flitwick chirped. He waved his hand and the balls disappeared.

Draco dropped his face into his hand, muttering, and aimed his wand with venom at the feather.

He swished and flicked and whispered the incantation. Nothing happened. He sat up straight and tried again. Still nothing. He shook out his wand hand and performed the gesture a bit more violently. His face was burning hot, and if he wasn’t being stared at he’d be tempted to slip away for a cry.

Thankfully, he made it to the end of the hour without mortifying himself further, and he waved Harry off to the Great Hall. “I’ll catch up.”

With his bookbag clasped to his front, he slipped up to the front of the room when all the other first years had cleared out. The half-goblin was rooting around in his pockets and muttering, until at last he found some shiny hard candy, one of which he popped into his mouth with a crunch. He exclaimed as Draco approached, and beckoned him closer.

“Since I assume you’ve learned your lesson…?” Flitwick paused and waited for Draco to nod his assent. “Very good, very good. Then, let’s talk about your levitating spell.”

He took another shiny thing from his hand and tossed it into his mouth. It wasn’t like any candy Draco had seen. It was jagged and oddly shaped and white, and it looked for all the world like some kind of... quartz. He must have been looking at his professor funny, because Flitwick snapped twice to get his attention.

“Don’t mind me, Mr. Malfoy. I am an old man with habits.” He pushed his glasses up higher on his nose, and they immediately fell back down. “But I keep an eye out for each of my students. Teaching is a very serious matter to me!”

“Oh. Alright?”

“Good, good. Your _wingardium leviosa_ is flawless in technique. And yet you could not budge the feather!” Draco was tempted to spit back something sarcastic in the vein of ‘oh, yes, thank you for reminding me of the day’s humiliation,’ when, with a sparkle in his eye, Flitwick added: “Even though you were perfectly capable on Monday!”

Draco opened his mouth and let his eyes drift as he searched for the memory of Monday’s class. That was true, wasn’t it? “I dunno, that’s just the kind of thing that happens to me. I need to work on being more consistent.”

“No, no, that’s not it at all. You are finely consistent in everything but the casting. It’s clear that doing well is important to you, hm?”

He snorted, “Yes sir, I’m in Slytherin.”

“Then I implore you to think a little harder about the trouble you’re having.” He tapped the side of his head with one of those long, bony fingers. “Or better yet, stop thinking about it at all. There are times when your gut knows better.”

“That’s a bit rich from you, isn’t it?” said Draco before he could stop himself. Realizing that was horribly rude, he stammered, “I mean, as head of Ravenclaw.”

Flitwick gave a good-natured chuckle. “Ah, young Malfoy. The world has more colors than red, green, yellow, and blue.”

He hopped down from his stack of books and brushed Draco away with a delicate shooing motion. “Now, get to lunch before it’s too late! You won’t learn a thing this afternoon if you haven’t eaten. Oh, and of course--”

He produced the set of Remembralls with the same flourish he had used to disappear them. Draco opened his hands like a beggar and Flitwick dumped them onto him. At least now he could practice the spell back in the common room that night and wasn’t stuck with the embarrassment.

“I hope you don’t mind, I made a simple modification to your toy.”

As though to demonstrate, a puff of red smoke appeared in one of them, twisting into the loose form of a quill feather, before disappearing back into the white fog. Draco breathed in. “You… put the charm on it?”

“It’s been a while since I have seen one of these. They were very popular when I was a student, you know!” He chuckled and flicked his wand up towards the chalkboard and began writing out his next lesson with a floating bit of chalk. “Very nostalgic. Yes, I’m bound to be fond of any student with a healthy interest in unusual charms work. And, if you can give me a foot of parchment on _teleremembrall_ , as we called it, by the end of the week, I may return those five points from earlier with a little extra.”

Draco took a few private moments to gawp at the professor, before he stuffed the Remembralls into his bag with a “Yes, professor!” and bolted for the door with a grin.

  
  


\-----

  
  


Draco presented the Remembrall to Harry, practically squirming. It was the first one he had taken; they looked almost identical, but for a scuff on one from when Longbottom had fallen on it. He’d only noticed it after staring at it for ages, it was almost invisible, but it didn’t feel right giving Harry the less-than-perfect one.

“They’re not very reliable from a distance, but as long as you’re in the castle I should be able to get to you.”

Harry turned it over in his hands. “Thank you.”

“You haven’t even seen it yet! Watch this.” He cleared his throat and held his Remembrall close to his face. “Say ‘hello.’”

Harry gasped softly as red smoke bubbled up inside the glass and formed the shape of a slowly waving hand. Draco frowned. He had thought it would actually send the words… Had Flitwick changed the spellwork?

“That’s brilliant.”

“No, it’s rubbish, it’s not supposed to do that.”

Harry gave him _that_ look. “Well I like it.”

Draco could take that and be satisfied with it. Harry had liked his gift. He thought it was impressive even though it was broken and didn’t work properly. But it was _broken_. And he hadn’t even been able to make it himself.

He needed to do one better.

But Draco wasn’t very good at making things, and lately it seemed like his magic had just been on the fritz, ignoring him. And just buying him something wasn’t good enough. Harry had as many mounds of gold in the vault as Draco’s family did. If it was going to be special, it’d have to be something only Draco could give him.

The answer came to him at last: Draco could teach him how to fly.

He went to find Madame Hooch and put the request to her. Since Harry had missed the first lesson out of altruism, wouldn’t it be alright if they made up for it, instead of waiting another month and a half for the next session?

A regretful head shake from Hooch confirmed his fears. Harry knew what he was volunteering himself for. It was out of her hands. Students outside of teams and tryouts weren’t allowed to use the Quidditch pitch unapproved, and first years especially were not to fly without supervision. They would simply have to wait until November for the next flying day, or else seek out special permission.

The only place to go for special permission was to his head of house. And that wasn’t happening.

He caught Dumbledore on the way out of his office. He didn’t look surprised to see Draco coming to him, but he never looked surprised. Maybe he was too senile to register surprise anymore.

“Professor Dumbledore?”

“You look anxious today, Mr. Malfoy,” he remarked pleasantly.

“Yeah. Yeah, sure, I’m anxious. I had a question to ask, actually.” Dumbledore nodded. “So, Harry-- I mean, Harry Potter?”

“Yes, I know.”

“Yes. He missed the first flying lesson to take another student to the hospital wing, which is totally unfair, so I wondered if--”

“If you could receive special permission for him to make it up?” Dumbledore steepled his fingers and tapped them thoughtfully. “Might I recommend that you ask Professor Snape to approve that for you?”

He’d stupidly gotten his hopes up for a moment, but Draco was sure that the sight of his face falling was what Dumbledore had been after. “Thank you, professor.”

Ugh. Ugh! Why was this all so ridiculous? It wasn’t as though Harry was getting any noticeable perks from being the chosen one. The least the professors could do was throw him a bone now and then.

He’d have to take his chances with Severus then.

Putting on a bright demeanor, Draco swung into his office with a, “‘Lo, Sev.”

Severus looked up at him like Draco’s mere presence put him in dire need of a Pepper-up. Draco rolled his eyes as he stepped up to his desk, and dipped into a dramatic, arms-out half-curtsey. “I mean, good evening, esteemed professor. How’s, uh, grading?”

“What is it you want now?”

“Wow, that bad?”

“Get out, Draco. I’m busy.”

He looked busy, certainly. His desk was all covered in papers. What was all that stuff? Most of it didn’t look like essays.

“Alright, I do need a favor though. Just a really quick--”

“No. I will not approve your ‘special permission’ for flying lessons. Are we done?”

Draco flushed, feeling caught out. Of course the headmaster had gone and spoken to Severus! He probably thought this was a great laugh. “Why not?”

“I am not entertaining this childish conversation, Draco. I am busy.”

“It’s not childish to want to know why you won’t just, I dunno, write your signature on a piece of parchment and give it to Madame Hooch!”

Severus rubbed a circle on his temple. “Potter is not being deprived by being forced to wait for the next lesson along with everyone else. There’s no need to act so noble or so offended. It’s unbecoming.”

“Why don’t you like him?” When Severus dropped his hand and gave Draco a hard look, he only doubled down. “He’s one of us.”

“I am not going to argue with you. I see there’s no changing your mind. But you’ll learn, on your own in time, that you have made a very poor choice of friends.”

“As bad as yours?”

The next thing Draco knew, a gust of wind had sent him tumbling into the hall, and slammed the door shut behind him. So that was a wash. But if Severus thought that was enough to make Draco give up, he didn’t know him half as well as he thought.

If they didn’t have permission, then they’d just have to go without it. The important thing was not getting caught, but besides that…

Draco waited in the common room until Flint next appeared. He cornered him as he lounged in a chair near the fireplace and pulled apart his quill instead of using it to do his homework. The older boy snarled at him, exposing his big, disorderly teeth. “Piss off, Malfoy.”

“That’s not very businesslike, Flint,” he sniffed.

“Good thing I got no business with you. Now piss off.”

“Hold on, alright? I’m looking for a painless favor.” Flint looked skeptical, so he added, “You can name your price. Put it off for later, whatever.”

He snorted like a bull and slouched lower in his seat, the mass of him- all that _muscle_ , Merlin- making the chair look small. “What d’you want then? This better be good.”

“What’s the best way to get into the Quidditch pitch?”

“... Walk to it.”

“Without anybody seeing you?”

A smirk slowly unfurled on Flint’s face. “Now, that _will_ cost you.”

  
  


\-----

  
  


On the first fortnight, Draco was determined to get the password himself. He didn’t trust anyone but Harry to share it with him, and he didn’t trust anyone else to share it with Harry. After classes, he approached the painting of Salazar. He was painted with a severe profile and a strong jaw, perhaps in his 50s with the lines of age starting to deepen.

At the sight of an approaching student, he looked up from the notes he was scratching away at with his quill. He wore the polite disinterest that was his mum’s signature look.

“Good evening, sir.” He bowed slightly to the portrait, who inclined his head back. “Would you do me the honor of telling me the password?”

Salazar looked him up and down. “Hm. What is your name, boy?”

“Draco Malfoy, sir.”

Salazar’s expression morphed into distaste. “Ah,” he said. “A Franc.”

Without another word, he shook his head and turned back to his notes. What? What was _that_?

“A… Franc, sir?” he stammered.

Salazar did not look up at him.

Later, in their room, he bemoaned his wasted effort to Harry. “A Franc!” he cried. “What does that even mean? I’m as English as anyone. Merlin, we’re going to be locked out all year at this rate.”

Harry suggested he could give it a go. And, why not? They didn’t have much choice. So Draco went back out to the common room, this time with Harry in tow. Salazar and he did much the same song and dance as he had done with Draco, until the portrait heard Harry’s name.

“Potter, eh?” His cool demeanor was cracked by a small smile. “If I’m not mistaken, you’re rightfully one of Godric’s, aren’t you? That’s very interesting.”

Harry rubbed the back of his neck and scrubbed through his hair. “Yeah, I’m pretty strange I guess.”

Salazar made a noise that might have indicated a laugh. “Indeed.” He leaned in close to the surface of his painting. “The password is ‘diligence.’”

Harry was always doing amazing things, even when he didn’t mean to. He’d figured out by now, along with most of their Slytherin classmates, that in terms of pure skill or power he was sort of… ordinary? He’d picked up well in certain classes, Defense in particular, despite Quirrell's distance and quailing and propensity to work himself to tears. But even taking aside his deprived upbringing he wasn’t exactly a prodigy. That Muggleborn girl was making faster strides than him. Still, no matter how close they got, Draco didn’t think the mystique would ever totally wear off. But ‘amazing’ was broad. Sometimes the amazing things were like, charming Salazar Slytherin on their first meeting. But sometimes what was amazing was how stupid he could be.

On that Saturday, Draco nearly had a fit when he sent Harry a message with the Remembrall and got no response. Normally if the stupid thing hadn’t translated right, he’d at least get back a question mark from Harry’s side. Today there was nothing. He nearly pulled his hair out until Harry walked in at lunch.

“What happened to you?” Draco demanded as soon as he sat down. Then he realized he was being excessive, and took a deep breath to calm himself. “I kept sending messages.”

Harry made an awful, guilty face. “I’ll tell you later.”

The suspense killed him all through the meal; he couldn’t eat much of anything. He packed up a few sandwiches in a napkin and stuffed them in his bag and begged Harry to do the same, so they could go somewhere private to talk.

They sat out on an isolated spot on the terrace, in the shade of a tall bush with reddish spackles on the leaves. The only people who seemed to be around were other pairs of people looking to talk in private. Most everyone was busy eating, and with the overcast sky nobody was motivated to eat outside. Draco dropped himself down on a bench, but Harry was too antsy to sit.

“Why didn’t you answer your Remembrall?”

“I sort of…” Harry began, cringing, “gaveittoNeville?”

“What?” Draco squawked.

“I know, I know! I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“Harry, how can you give something away without meaning to?” His _gift_! He’d given away the _gift_ that he’d made for him. Even if he hadn’t done the spellwork, he’d never really given a _gift_ before, one he’d thought and cared about.

“It just happened. We were outside the greenhouse, studying the Cure for Boils potion, and I was fiddling with it because I thought you might send a message, and he saw it, and...” Harry sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair, leaving it even more tragic than usual. “He said how he’d lost his a couple weeks ago at the flying lesson, and he hadn’t told his gran because she’d be furious with him for losing another one. And… I told him I wasn’t really using this one and he could have it and she wouldn’t know.”

Draco’s anger had settled down into incredulity. “Why would you do that?”

“I said I don’t know. I just-- I thought he needed it more than I do.”

“With the _teleremembrall_ on it, it doesn’t even work anymore!”

“I couldn’t have told him that,” Harry protested. He folded his arms and got a thoughtful look on his face. “Could I have?”

“Of course you couldn’t, he’d probably have it taken away if he knew.”

Harry shrugged. “Maybe he should. I mean, it was his, and you broke--”

“I told you it was mine.”

Harry gave him a look. “Draco, come on. Why would _you_ need a Remembrall? You practically remember being born.”

“I do not,” Draco stammered out. “I forget plenty of things. Go on, ask me your birthday right now, I’ve read about it loads of times and I don’t remember at all!”

They exchanged a look as the silliness of their situation sank in. Draco couldn’t have said who started laughing first, but in moments, Harry had collapsed onto the bench next to him and the both of them were howling. A few older years gave them odd looks as they passed by, so Draco tried to cover his mouth and preserve his dignity, but it was no use. Every time he thought they were done, they’d break down into another round of incoherent laughter.

“Maybe it’ll help,” Draco gulped out with tears in his eyes. “If it never tells him he’s forgotten something, he’ll think he’s remembered everything!”

“That’s awful!”

Harry bumped him with his shoulder, and Draco bumped back. Their laughter was quieting down, and Harry slowly let himself relax, inclined against him. Draco’s heart felt even more than usual like a porcelain trinket carelessly dangling in his chest.

“It was pretty useless anyway. You didn’t understand half my messages.”

“That’s because you always wanted it to say something too complicated.”

Draco snorted. Wasn’t that always the way?

“Why did you even make it?” Harry asked. “When were we ever going to really use it? We’re never apart.”

Feeling he had to defend himself, Draco said, “Well, I can’t leave you alone. With all these bad elements around. Someone’s got to make sure you’re safe.”

Oh no, no, that was even more embarrassing. He tried to rub the pink out of his cheeks. A glance down at Harry showed him smiling softly. Very slowly, like he might be scared off, Draco reached up and put an arm around Harry’s back to give him a quick squeeze. His skin tingled a bit. That was the first hug he’d had with someone besides his mum in years.

He looked up at the sky. He was pretty sure it wouldn’t rain in the next few hours...

“Hey. Want to see something you can’t give away to Longbottom?”

“Oh, shut up.” Harry pushed himself upright, but his tone was light. “What are you planning?”

“It’s a surprise! Come on.”

He led Harry down to the dungeons, following Flint’s directions. Down and to the left from the potions classroom… Left again… Two doors down… They stopped at the entrance to what looked to be a disused potions room, coated in dust. A few cracked old cauldrons sat on the demonstration table, but aside from that there were no implements at all in the abandoned room. The ingredient store was equally empty, and the unlocked door swung gently on its hinges.

“What is this?” Harry asked, leaving footprints in the dust.

Draco walked into the storage cabinet and looked up at the ceiling. “ _Scalaria_!”

A panel in the stone shifted, and a ladder dropped down with a thud. He put his hands on his hips and jerked his head towards it. “Just a secret passage.”

“Wicked, where’s it go?”

“You’ll see!”

The passage up the ladder was long, several straight minutes of climbing that left his arms sore. At the top was a trapdoor which he shoved open with his shoulder. Dim light filtered in from above, as though shining through frosted glass. He heaved himself out and found that they were inside the stands of the Quidditch pitch, the sunlight strained through colorful tarp.

“We’re at the field?”

“We had to stop and get brooms, didn’t we?”

That stopped Harry in his tracks. His eyes got all round. “Are we flying?”

“Race you to the Hufflepuff lockers!”

Harry skidded in the dirt after him.

After pilfering the Hufflepuff broom closet for a pair of Cleansweeps that wouldn’t be missed, they snuck their way down the hill and towards the edge of the forest. It was too risky to fly in the pitch where Hooch could catch them, he explained, and as long as they kept towards the edges of the forest they should be safe. They did Care of Magical Creatures classes in there.

Keeping their eyes peeled for any potential danger but feeling fairly safe in the light of day, they wandered into the wood. For all the horror stories Draco had heard about this place, it was honestly quite beautiful. The trees bent and twined above and all around them, the ground uneven and dotted with ferns and brush with fall-blooming flowers.

With a bit of walking, they stumbled into a grove where the trees thinned, and the cool sunlight splayed out over a grassy clearing. Draco ran out into it and the grass came up nearly to his knee, thick and springy. Harry ran out beside him, twirling a clover flower he’d plucked from the bed. It was perfect.

“Alright, so just…” Draco demonstrated the posture, straddling over his broom. “It might be weird for a minute, but you’ll start to hover.”

He kicked off just to show Harry and hung in the air. He had to start with the beginner stuff. Harry copied his movements, and as easily as breathing he lifted off the ground. He hardly even had to push. Draco’s face broke out into a grin.

“Yes! You’re a natural!” ‘Like me,’ he added in his mind. They really were meant to be friends.

Harry laughed, all the nerves fallen away. He’d never sounded so free. Draco leaned forward and shot up, almost breaching the tops of the trees before making a sharp turn to face Harry. His eyes gleamed as he led his broom up with the confidence of someone who’d been flying for years.

Draco peeled back and somersaulted through the air as he circled around the thick, doleful pine they had skirted up to. He clung to his broom and willed it to turn tight, for his body to obey him. He pulled up out of the loop with his heart pounding in his ears, upright and in one piece. Just like the pros did. Harry didn’t wait for him to be finished this time; he dove and crossed paths with Draco on his way around, bent low like he was testing his speed. Though out of sight, Draco heard him let out a breathless whoop. He rounded the bend just in time to see the bristle of straw and a flutter of black robes shoot off into the grove.

They darted around each other, startling a few birds and bats from their nests. If any of them were agitated enough to attack, Draco didn’t notice. Even on shoddy Cleansweeps, they were faster than any of these songbirds.

He burst out above the tops of the trees, sending pine needles flying. “It’s good, isn’t it?” he shouted down to Harry.

Harry was hovering by a tree, watching a bird hopping around its nest, grooming its pair of young. “It’s the best.”

  
  


\-----

  
  


Harry was looking out the window instead of at McGonagall, which was a dangerous game. Every now and then Draco would flick him in the side or on the hand and jerk his head up towards the front of the class as though to say ‘pay attention.’ Harry was better than him at Transfiguration, and if he had to explain the lesson to a distracted Harry later, they’d both be in trouble.

“Look how beautiful it is out,” Harry whispered when they moved to the practical part of the lesson. Double Transfiguration gave them a bit more time to chat without falling under the hard eye of their professor.

“What, do you want to take a walk in it?”

He shook his head. “I want to go to the grove.”

“That’s too risky.” They only ever went out when there was plenty of light, but after dinner night would fall fast. He had no intention of being caught in the forest after dark.

“I say it’s worth it. Don’t you want to go too?”

“Sure, but… why are you so raging to go today?”

“Because I need to be in the air!” The pure eagerness of it made Draco laugh like a girl.

“We’re flying tomorrow, we can wait until then.”

“Can you really?”

He was about to tease him, tell him not to be daft. But he pictured the forest, their forest now, their clearing, catching glimpses of creatures down on the forest floor as they twisted above it all. Harry looking the happiest he’d ever been in his life, with the growing roundness on his cheeks glowing from the exercise.

He shook his head. “No.”

After dinner, they made their way back to the common room so as not to raise suspicion, but stopped short of going inside. Instead, they circled back around to the disused potions lab and out the tunnel. Grabbing their brooms from the Hufflepuff locker- grabbing the Hufflepuff’s brooms, but who was counting- they ran off into the forest. Harry barely waited until they were in the trees to hop on his broom and take off.

They made a lazy trail to their grove, watching the underbrush and the little creatures slip by. Draco stopped short with a gasp at a flash of something pure silver down on the ground. He gestured wildly for Harry to come and see, and they flew slow and silent over to catch sight of the creature. The unicorn looked up at them and tossed its head, sending fine white-silver hair fluttering over its neck and around its horn.

“Oh my god. Draco, look at her.”

“I know. I know.”

The unicorn nickered at them in a way that sounded as much like a laugh as anything. It trotted off into the trees, and when the two of them rounded the bend to follow it, it was gone.

Filled with manic energy from the chance encounter, the two of them sped off towards their spot, shouting into the evening sky.

“Fancy a slalom?” Draco called out with a cheeky grin.

Harry rocked back and bucked to a stop. His hair stood messily around his head and caught the light like a Byzantine halo. “You sure that’s what you want?”

He climbed up into the canopy so they could hover face to face on the top of the world. He could see the little thin welts on Harry’s cheeks where the branches had whipped him as they flew. A light wind blustered around them and carried their voices off into the evening, glowing with pale golden light. Their grove was cast in green shade that reminded him strangely of the common room. He was so glad they’d decided to fly today.

“Don’t get cocky! I’ve been flying a lot longer than you.”

“Yeah, that’ll make it much more embarrassing for you when I win.” His smile turned so delightfully Slytherin. “But it’s not too late to back out.”

“Harry Potter, you are gonna eat your words!”

They landed and walked around the outside of the grove until they’d agreed on a complicated weave of 100 yards, of narrow trees hugged close together. The light was starting to fade and the shadows crawled closer as they remounted.

“One!” Draco crouched over his broom and took a deep breath.

“Two!” He kicked off hard, forcing all the momentum he could muster into it. Behind him, Harry squawked out a laugh of “You cheat!” and sped off.

They darted between the trees, Harry dogging his heels as Draco tried to keep him from passing. He’d swerve up fast when he thought he felt Harry doing the same at his back, then dive low to cut him off. At the far tree, Draco spun into a turn, but Harry’s turns were tighter, sending him almost parallel to the ground. Reckless!

Now it was a proper competition in the last 100 yards back. The both of them rolled through the corners around one another, barreling towards their clearing. Sweat broke out on his neck- they were too close, they’d tie for sure, and then they’d have to dispute the tie and-- At the last moment, he caught unexpected movement out of the corner of his eye as Harry heaved himself forward off the broom.

He landed in the clearing just before Draco cleared the trees; it must have hurt even with how he rolled through it, but Harry just laughed. His broom shuddered forward another few feet without him before knocking into the ground. Draco landed and flopped down next to him.

“You madman! That was the stupidest, most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Harry rolled onto his side to grin at him. “Am I stupid and amazing?”

“No, you’re just stupid.”

“A stupid winner, though.”

Draco crossed his arms and rolled over, sending Harry into another bout of laughter and teasing. He quickly gave up on pouting and came around enough to start snipping back. Descending night threw deeper and deeper shadows over them, and when he next looked up, he could catch the soft blinking of the first stars. Time to head back.

“You’re filthy,” Draco noted as they clambered into the Quidditch pitch and headed for the Hufflepuff lockers.

“Yeah, I hit the ground pretty--”

On the bench in front of the locker doors, sat McGonagall and Hooch, wearing identical cold expressions and with their hands folded in their laps. McGonagall got up from her place and brushed down the front of her robe.

“I do hope your flying weather held true, Mr. Potter.”

  
  


\-----

  
  


After a tongue-lashing and a reduction of points- 30 each, that awful woman!- McGonagall turned them over to Severus for discipline. Draco wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or terrified. On the one hand, by himself he could trust Severus to go easy on him. But now with Harry in the mix…

“I’m sorry I dragged you into this,” Harry said miserably as they waited outside Severus’s office. He was probably trying to increase their suspense.

“You didn’t drag me into anything. I was the one who didn’t want to wait for the next flying class.”

Harry still looked guilty and sullen, so Draco pulled on his sleeve. “Better yet, we can blame Severus. If he’d given me special permission, I wouldn’t have had to go around the rules for you.”

That did the trick. Harry ducked to hide the smile it had put on his face.

The door slammed open. Severus looked down his nose at them. “You first, Mr. Malfoy.”

He tugged on Harry’s sleeve again and they grasped hands for a moment before he disappeared behind the door. Once they’d gotten a few steps away Severus rounded on him and cast something on the door- _silencio_?

“What were you thinking, Draco?” Severus swung out his arm to one side like the arm of a hangman’s pole. “Running off into the Forbidden Forest to fly your broomstick! You spoiled child.”

“I didn’t--”

“What will your mother think?”

Draco blanched. He hadn’t thought about that. “Well, what are you going to tell _her_ for? She’ll take me out of school!”

“Perhaps you should have thought of that before gallivanting off with that Potter.” Severus spat the name with more visceral disgust than Draco had heard from him in a long while. He shook his head hard.

“Sev, please don’t. I promise I’ll never do anything again. I’ll be completely perfect until I graduate, just please don’t tell mum.”

Severus huffed, then took a breath and stroked his thin, dark beard to gather himself. He didn’t look convinced. “I just wanted to do something nice for him,” Draco blurted. “Haven’t you ever had a friend you’d do anything for?”

That got his attention, though maybe not in a good way judging by the way his eyes narrowed at Draco. Like he was trying to read him, like he wasn’t sure what Draco was playing at. Evidently he was satisfied with his examination, because instead of yelling at him, he just sighed and rubbed at the sleepless bruises under his eyes.

“You are exhausting,” he said,in the normal exasperated tone he took with Draco. “Don’t get caught doing anything stupid, Draco, lest the Malfoy family send me into an early grave. If the stress you give me doesn’t do it, your mother will.”

Draco almost sagged in relief. “Am I…?”

Severus rolled his eyes and flicked his hand. “Detention for a month. One week scraping out cauldrons, another helping Professor Sprout weed de-slug the garden, and so on. You’ll both be barred from the flying lesson in November. But no, I won’t tell Narcissa.”

A month of servant work had never sounded so good to Draco.

  
  


\-----

  
  


Nearly a month later, he knew he had been naive.

They were on their second-to-last assignment, scrubbing the floor and stairs in the astronomy tower. They’d missed dinner almost every day that week because it took so bloody long, and Draco had gone to the hospital wing with blisters all over his hands. He scrubbed at a smudge of dirt on the stair with a dark look on his face. He should have just let his mum take him out of school.

Harry was much better at it than he was, but since the first day Draco had gotten fast enough that they thought they might actually finish before all the food was gone. They might have been extra rushed that day. Neither of them wanted to miss their first Halloween feast.

Draco sat back on his heels for a moment and rubbed his sore, wet hands on his robe. It had gotten very awkward leaving out all mention of Harry from his letters to his mum, but it was a necessary sacrifice. Harry sat up himself at that moment and rubbed his cheek, accidentally smearing it with suds.

“We’re nearly done,” he reassured, catching Draco’s sour expression.

“Oh and just think, if we make it to the feast in time, we might manage to lose one of our keys again.”

There had been a campaign to get Harry and Draco locked out of their room for the last month, a punishment in conjunction with their losing all those house points. It was almost funny. They’d only found Draco’s key after Zabini had hidden it when they started coming up to the astronomy tower to clean, and realized that Harry’s key was getting hot, sensing its stray other half. Only by Salazar’s interest in Harry did they ever manage to get the new password each fortnight to get in.

“I keep telling you, if you’d just put the key in your underpants--”

“I’m not going to--”

“-- nobody will try to steal it!”

“That’s disgusting. I hope you wash your hands often.”

“Oh, that reminds me, I don’t think I told you. When I was at Hagrid’s--”

“When did you go to the giant’s place?”

“Draco, I asked you if you wanted to come. You said ‘ugh, the giant, no thank you,’ so I went with Neville.”

He pouted, which Harry ignored as he continued. “When I went there, I found out that-- remember when I said I’d gone to Gringotts, on the train? And that Hagrid had gotten a package there? Well, someone broke into that vault we went to with the package, the same day we went to pick it up.”

“Oh, that is odd.” Who was mad enough break into Gringotts? Who was good enough to succeed?

“Right? And ever since then, I can’t stop thinking. Like, what was it that we went and got? Where is it here? Whoever tried to get it surely wouldn’t give up just because it went to Hogwarts.”

He shuffled down with his bucket and made a quick run over the last few steps, then jumped up and threw his brush into it. “Well, we haven’t seen anything suspicious. They might not even know it’s here.”

Harry shook his head and followed him down. “The break-in would have been right after we got whatever it was. He probably knew it was his last chance to get it before it was moved.”

“That’s just a guess though, you can’t say for sure.”

They bickered lightly all the way to the bathroom where they dumped out their water buckets. Just a few more days of this. Dinner must have started 10 minutes ago now, and Draco was getting antsy to go down there. He almost challenged Harry to a race down the stairs just to get him to move faster.

On the way down, just across the way, Draco caught sight of a familiar pudgy figure. “What’s Longbottom doing up here?”

“Oh! Hey, Neville, dinner’s that way,” Harry shouted across the stairwell, changing course so they’d meet up with his friend. Draco groaned and followed. He shouldn’t have said anything.

Longbottom looked dumbly at them and waved. “I wasn’t feeling well,” he said as they got closer, “but I can’t find the Fat Lady.”

“The Fat Lady?”

“Yeah, she hangs over the Gryffindor common room.” Longbottom shrugged, just oozing shame. “I get lost all the time. With the staircases moving, I just get so confused, I can’t hardly keep track of what floor I’m on.”

“What floor is Gryffindor Tower on?” Harry asked, turning to consult Draco.

He tried not to puff up at being sought out. He already knew he was Harry’s smart friend. “Oh, um, I think… the third?”

Longbottom nodded. “Yeah, that sounds right.”

They were on the second floor then, Harry pointed out, so they piled onto one of the upward stairs. It cracked under their feet and started to move. They all stopped and caught themselves on the banisters, and then ran to the platform when it connected.

“Where are we now?” Longbottom asked in his subdued whine.

Harry glanced around. “Actually, I think this is…”

He strode forward and towards a darkened corridor at the right-hand side of the platform. Draco suddenly got a bad feeling.

“Harry, are you saying this is the forbidden corridor?” Harry turned and nodded, eyes bright. “Haven’t we had enough of forbidden places?”

“I just want to have a look ‘round, nobody’s here.”

“That doesn’t mean nobody’s _watching._ ”

“The forbidden corridor?” Longbottom echoed belatedly, looking faint. “The ‘die a most painful death’ corridor?”

Harry looked witheringly back at them and walked into the dim hall. Draco squinted and debated leaving him to rot in there. They were missing Halloween feast for this nonsense! He almost called out to Harry with a temptation of treacle tart, but that wouldn’t sway him now that he was set on something. What a stubborn prat.

“Well,” he said to Longbottom, “don’t just stand there looking stupid, he could get hurt in there.”

Longbottom boggled at him. Some friend he was! Sniffing, Draco turned and jogged after Harry. All the better if he crawled back to his dormitory and left them alone. Soft footfalls behind him told Draco that he’d have no such luck.

The mouth of the hall opened into… well, it wasn’t as spectacular as he’d expected. It wasn’t spectacular at all. It was very boring. Other than the torches and Harry, it was completely empty.

“See anything you like?”

Harry turned to him, looking surprised he’d followed, and shook his head as he looked back to the walls. “It’s empty,” he said, as though they couldn’t see that for themselves. “I’m trying to think… why would it be empty?”

“Because Dumbledore is a mad old coot who’s not fit to run an ice cream shop?”

“Shut up, I’m being serious.”

“We really shouldn’t be here.” Longbottom was already trembling. Draco put a hand on his hip and smirked at him.

“Come on, Gryffindor, where’s your sense of adventure? Nothing’s jumped out and gotten us yet.”

Honestly, he wouldn’t mind leaving if he hadn’t been determined to give Longbottom a proper scare. There really wasn’t anything here. Just a long, barely-lit hall with a crude old door at the end. Harry was squinting around the barren corridor, looking at the walls in the flickering light of the sconces.

“There used to be paintings here,” he announced. When Draco and Longbottom looked at him, puzzled, he reached up and pointed. There was a row of unevenly spaced but parallel holes in the walls. “They must have hung them up there, and moved them before this year. Isn’t that weird?”

“Maybe…” Draco frowned in thought and crossed his arms over his chest. “Maybe whatever’s here, they don’t want any gossip getting around through the portraits?”

Harry nodded, still looking up at the walls. He stiffened. A moment later, Draco heard it too. From the distance came echoing screams and shouts and a low rumble like thunder, and the three of them froze, not even breathing. The hairs stood up straight on every inch of his body. Just as quickly, the screams faded. They stood, almost too scared to breathe.

Longbottom spoke first, in a squeak. “What the hell was that?”

“Peeves?” Harry supplied weakly. “Halloween prank?”

Draco tried and failed to keep his voice flippant. “‘A most painful death,’ perhaps.”

Longbottom turned deathly pale. “We need to go right now.”

He had to agree with that. They jogged back to the entrance, and all collided to a stop at once. Draco almost hissed to Harry to ask what the holdup was, only to freeze when he saw what Harry saw. The purple bob of Quirrell’s turban was making its way up the stairs at a run. He’d see them for sure if they came out of the dark hall.

“We can’t get another detention,” Draco said.

The three of them shuffled back into the dark, and Harry poked his head out to watch the professor. Draco wrung his hands, and sucked in a breath when he saw Harry go stiff.

“He’s coming this way!”

Oh lord, where was there to hide? As a body they all darted down the hall, searching for any kind of cubby or any place to tuck themselves into where the fire flickers wouldn’t give them away. Nothing. Nothing but the wooden door at the far end. He rattled it once and found it locked. Without thinking, Draco drew his wand and whispered, “ _Alohamora_!”

It worked. Morgana’s freezing tits, it worked. They pushed in and shut the door, trying to be quiet in the hopes that Quirrell, turning into the hall, wouldn’t notice them.

They held their breath, pressed up against the door. His footsteps were just audible, a soft echo. He was still walking quite fast, it sounded like. What was he doing here?

“Go away, go away,” Draco murmured, chewing on the side of his mouth.

Harry’s face lit up despite their dire situation. “Hey, you cast that spell!” He put a hand on his shoulder. “That was really quick thinking, and on the first try and everything.”

“Oh… yeah.” He wasn’t sure if he was grateful or embarrassed that Harry had noticed. “Thanks.”

Then Longbottom’s tremulous voice rose up at his back. “Oh, hell.”

Draco nearly admonished him for swearing, but when he looked back, he froze. Pinned like a rabbit under the sleepy six-eyed gaze of a massive black Cerberus. A squeak rattled in his throat. It slowly stirred, shaking one of its great heads and yawning with the other. He hadn’t realized before how intimidating a yawn could be. As one of the heads lifted, he thought he saw…

“It’s sitting on a door,” Harry said.

Longbottom looked back at Harry like he was the one with three heads. “It’s 30 bloody feet tall and you’re looking at what it’s sitting on?”

“Maybe it’s--”

Harry was about to say friendly when a forbidding growl rumbled out of one or maybe all of the heads. Lips pulled back to reveal sharp teeth, each one the size of their own hands. They pressed back against the door, half-frozen. Draco’s fingers had a death grip on the handle, but he didn’t seem able to gather the power to pull the latch open.

Harry grabbed his arm. “Open the door!”

Barely knowing what he was saying, Draco hissed, “Quirrell's out there!”

“And that thing’s in here!”

Longbottom shoved himself into the two of them and forced Draco’s arm before either of them could say anything else, and they all tumbled out into the stone corridor. Falling onto each other in a pile, one of them managed to kick the door shut as the beast tried to press one of his drooling snouts up to it.

Draco looked up, and his breath, which he had only just been catching, stuck in his throat. Quirrell was there. And _Severus_. They stood at odds, the latter's hand clutched to his wand. Longbottom had a look like he was considering throwing himself on the mercy of the Cerberus. Draco was tempted to agree. What were they doing here?

"Hello professors." How did Harry manage to sound so casual?

"... Potter." Severus's voice was shaking with anger. "What… in the _blazes_ are you doing."

Quirrell was backing away; Severus's eyes tracked him, but he seemed to put the students at a higher priority.

"We were lost, sir. We-- the staircases changed while we were trying to help Neville find the Fat Lady."

"Why would--"

Draco cut in, "And then, you know, we heard this screaming, and…"

"That's. Quite. Enough."

Quirrell had gotten a few feet behind Severus, eyes wide and wet as always. At last he turned tail and bolted from the corridor. He clearly wasn't looking forward to a demonstration of that famous bad temper. Severus didn't even turn to watch him go. Harry hissed and put his palm to his forehead.

"Get up. All of you."

The three untangled their limbs and climbed to their feet. Of all of them, Longbottom was worst off. He'd busted his lip falling over, and looked about to cry to boot.

Severus only seemed to be working himself up more as he spoke. "Unbelievable. Of all the conceited children's games. To not only seek out danger, but to drag your own classmates down with you. No doubt in some ego-driven quest for imagined glory."

"What were _you_ doing here, sir?"

Harry kept very, very composed. The note of anger was impossible to hide, but Harry did well for himself. Hearing it made Draco’s heart do funny things.

Severus's own heart was doing something, if the darkening of his face was any indication. " _What_?"

"You and Professor Quirrell. We got here by accident. But you knew there's a three-headed dog in there. Does Professor Dumbledore know you're--"

"Are you attempting," Severus spat, stepping closer, "to threaten me, Potter?"

"No, sir. Not if you haven't done anything wrong."

Severus had stepped up to Harry and loomed over him, dripping with malice. He hadn't let go of his wand. At any moment, he could hex them all-- hex _Harry_ \-- and considering what a doddering old goat the headmaster was, he probably wouldn't even be sacked for it.

Instead, in a low, low voice, near a whisper, he said, "Get out of my sight."

Longbottom responded first in a rare showing and bolted past the great bat. Harry stayed still, looking their head of house full in the face. Orange firelight made the green of his eyes stand out even in the darkness. Draco grabbed his sleeve and tugged.

“Harry, come on,” he whispered.

At last, Harry broke his little staring contest and let Draco drag him away. Severus stayed where he was, stock still even as they rounded the corner.

Lingering there by the stairway was Longbottom, pale and shaking. The staircase was now full of students being led in uniform lines to their dorms. Everyone looked anxious and stepped lively.

“You should get a move on,” Harry said, giving Longbottom a pat on the shoulder. “The Gryffindors are all there going up, you can follow them.”

Oops, Draco realized. So the Gryffindor common room was on another floor after all.

Longbottom swallowed and nodded, beyond words. Harry gave him one final pat and sent him off. He and Draco waited for the far end stairs to move again, before heading towards the path to the dungeon. The moment Longbottom was out of sight, Harry’s careful expression turned to thunderous anger.

“That-- loony! Completely smug…!”

He open-palm slapped the railing in frustration and then shook out his sore hand. Draco had to fight not to smile. Not because he thought that his friend’s anger was funny, he knew none of this was a laughing matter, he was still scared half to death himself.

“What has he got against me?” Harry at last managed a coherent thought. His glasses had gone askew in the tumble and bent the wire, Draco realized. He really needed something sturdier.

Draco tried to placate him, saying, “Severus hates everyone,” but Harry cut him off.

“He bullies everyone. He calls their potions worthless and makes fun of their teeth or whatever. But he _hates_ me. He talks like that about me, like… like he’s making things up about me. He wants to blame me for everything that goes wrong. Do you know the things he said, the night he gave us detention?”

He couldn’t do anything but shrug. He didn’t know. He really didn’t. “I know. I’ve never seen him act the way he does around you.”

“He’s our head of house! It’s-- it’s so stupid.”

They were approaching the Great Hall, and he lowered his voice. Inside, they could peer in and see that all the tables were empty, save for Slytherin. Everyone was crowded at the table, whispering amongst themselves. Their entrance drew some eyes.

“Draco, there you are!” Zabini called, with a crisp grin. “We were sure the troll had eaten you.”

They sat at the near end of the table; there was still some vestige of food left, and both realized immediately how starved they were. Slathering a roll with butter, Draco scoffed, “What troll?”

“Someone’s released a troll in the dungeon,” said one of the Carrow girls. He still couldn’t tell the two second-years apart for the life of him.

“Meaning we’ve got to stay here until Farley comes back to hold our hands and walk us down,” Flint added gruffly, getting a round of chuckles from the older students.

“What a joke!” rang out from two voices at once. Draco and Zabini looked at each other. He turned his attention down to his plate. He forgot which of them had started saying that first, and which had picked it up.

  
  


\-----

  
  


Eventually, Gemma returned on the heels of McGonagall to tell them that the dungeons were certifiably troll-free, and they could return to their dormitories. Harry murmured to him as they walked, lagging at the back of the group, that wasn’t it quite strange that a troll had been released on this night, with everything that had happened with the three of them? Draco slightly resented that- the _three_ of them? Ugh!- but he had to agree. It was too neat to be a coincidence.

They didn’t see the head of house anywhere as they walked to the common room, and nobody had seen anything of him since the announcement.

“I’ll bet he’s cross that you told him off like that,” Draco suggested. Harry’s face was dark and frustrated, and he’d like to make him laugh. It didn’t work.

They huddled themselves away in their dorm room. There was no need to invite any prying ears to the strange information they’d gathered. Draco sat outside the ensuite bathroom while Harry showered, alternating between talking to him and scratching out a few lines in his charms essay. One of them had to do it.

“I didn’t want to say in front of Neville and scare him,” said Harry from the stall, “but I think I know what we saw tonight. I think… you said yourself that Hogwarts is one of the safest places to hide something.”

“They put a Cerberus on top of a trapdoor, Harry. That’s weird, even for Hogwarts.”

“I know it’s weird, but… that must make it something special, right? Something really, really valuable. Like something you’d keep in a high security vault at Gringotts.”

It took him a moment, but he caught on to what Harry meant. “Oh.”

Harry came out with his hair and shoulders swaddled in a towel each, and his ratty pyjamas on. He really liked the Hogwarts towels, Draco had noticed. Practically treated them like blankets sometimes.

He set his things down and went in now, just to splash his face and hair with water and brush his teeth. From outside he could hear Harry rustling around and glancing at the Charms paper. “I’ve been trying to think of what it might be. But I just… I don’t know anything about the wizarding world, at the end of the day.”

“Harry, that isn’t your fault!” He stuck his face under the spigot and let the cold water run into his hair. The steel was carved into the shape of serpents so that the water would gush from their mouths. While he appreciated the snake motif in general, it was a pretty ghastly image.

“I know. But you’ve got to admit, I’d be much more useful to everyone if I just--”

“What’s this about ‘everyone?’” Draco stood and let his wet hair drip onto his robes, which he shucked off and tossed into the corner. In his braies, he went and snatched the essay from Harry along with the rest of his books. He threw them onto his bed and flopped down nearly on top of them. Harry wasn’t looking at him; he was looking at his hands, clenched in front of him, with an especially grave look on his face.

“Draco, there’s something dangerous at the school. The professors aren’t telling us about it, not really. And strange things are happening. The students aren’t safe and it’s, I mean, it’s wrong to just let people get hurt because the teachers won’t do anything. We almost _died_ tonight. And that could happen to anyone here.”

“Yeah, we almost died, so leave it alone.”

“I’m not going to.” Draco looked up at Harry’s face, pinched and tense. “I’m not leaving this alone and letting people get hurt. So you can help me, or not, it won’t change my mind.”

They’d just finished being in big trouble. The clique had nearly stolen his key three times and successfully hidden it once. And he was on worse and worse terms with a man who might as well have been his uncle.

“Of course I’m going to help. Just… can we not get ourselves killed?”

Harry, crawling into bed, snarked back, “No, we’ve got to die.”

“I’m just saying, we need to be cautious and use our brains instead of you acting like-- like such a Gryffindor.”

Harry didn’t respond to that. He buried himself in the heavy covers and curled his knees towards his chest. He took his glasses off and fixed his eyes on some spot that looked to be along Draco’s bedframe. As much as Draco didn’t like letting a room go quiet, silences between them were usually comfortable. This one was not.

“Er. How did you think of the thing with the paintings?”

Harry shrugged and said, “I saw them and it made me think… my uncle wanted to move the picture frames he’d hung up last year, and my aunt and him had such a row over the holes in the walls.”

Draco grinned. “Merlin, what do Muggles even do for themselves? They’ll be relieved when you’re of age to use magic in the house, and you can fix things like that for them.”

“... Yeah.” Harry smiled sadly and turned over onto his other side. “Goodnight Draco.”

“Are you tired?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.” Draco didn’t pout. He _didn’t_. He got to talk to Harry all day, and would again tomorrow. He pulled his essay up to his face. “Goodnight.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! If you did, feel free to check me out over on tumblr for more info, etc. at: withswords.tumblr.com
> 
> I should mention, for all those curious. I'm a salty boy who was inspired to Finally write some Harry Potter fanfiction by some very bad and inexplicably popular Drarry fic that thatsarockfact55 and I read and roasted together over PMs. Plus I've had this idea rolling around in my head for YEARS, and this year is going to be the year of biting the bullet and just fucking WRITING.


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